Were You Ever 
a Child 












BOOKS OF ESSAYS 

THE MERRY-GO-ROUND 
by Carl Van Vechten 

MUSIC AND BAD MANNERS 
by Carl Van Vechten 

A BOOK OF CALUMNY 
by H, L. Mencken 

A BOOK OF PREFACES 
by H, L, Mencken 

PREJUDICES: First Series 
by H, L. Mencken 

PAVANNES AND DIVISIONS 
by Ezra Pound 

ALFRED A. KNOPF, Publisher 











Were You Ever 
a Child 



by 

Floyd Deli 




>.4f^^sr^ 



New York 

Alfred • A • Knopf 

1919 



COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY 
ALFRED A. KNOPF, Inc. 



,1?? 



:ci 2" '9''^ 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



)CI.A535456 



Preface 

When a fire-torn structure is about to fall in 
ruins, and some one says to the crowd, ** Look! 
that crack in the wall is getting wider! The 
beams on this side are all burned away, and it will 
fall in a minute. Stand clear!" — his remarks 
might perhaps be termed a criticism of an old insti- 
tution. And similarly, when some one says, *' Get 
off the track! That's the new fast mail tooting 
down there, just around the bend! She goes 
ninety miles an hour and doesn't stop till she gets 
to New York! '' — it is in a sense a plea in behalf 
of a new movement. In that sense, the following 
pages are a criticism of the existing school system, 
and a plea for the New Education. 

The situation is in appearance less dramatic 
than that, but the danger is quite as real. Edu- 
cation is changing so rapidly, its familiar aspects 
are crumbling so swiftly and the new methods 
are arriving upon the scene so fast, that a large 
part of the adult public runs the risk of being 

[v] 



Preface 

intellectually knocked down and run over or left 
smothered among the ruins. 

If we want to understand what is about to hap- 
pen — what is already happening — we must be 
prepared to discard our most cherished precon- 
ceptions on the subject, and look at it anew in the 
light of modern science — in the light of the most 
recent discoveries in economics, anthropology and 
psychology. We must be ready to face the most 
startling restatement of its purposes, the most ruth- 
less revaluation of its methods. 

This book is a brief resume of the situation in 
the light of these discoveries. It attempts to show 
how the present school system became what it is, 
and why it is now in the throes of revolutionary 
change. It analyses the current conceptions upon 
which the existing system is based, and shows why 
these conceptions are inadequate to sustain the 
burden which education is called upon by twentieth 
century civilization to bear. It centres attention 
upon the two things which constitute, in their jux- 
taposition, the essential problems of education — 
namely, the nature of modern life and the nature 
of the child. 

For the sake of this emphasis, and in order to 
make unmistakable the real and terrific problem 
involved, the method of exposition here chosen 

[vi] 



Preface 

has been one which challenges at the outset the 
chief prejudices entertained by the adult public on 
the subject — including the notion that education 
should be written about in a heavy, unintelligible 
and soporific manner. The mordant seriousness 
of these pages may be mistaken for flippancy; the 
total program of the new education, as thus set 
forth, may be regarded by some readers as a 
piece of scurrilous mischief: but the point at least 
will have been established, that the new education 
is something not comfortably identical with the 
old. 



[vii] 



Contents 

I The Child 13 

II The School Building 22 

III The Teacher 27 

IV The Book 36 

V The Magic Theory of Education 47 

VI The Caste System of Education 53 

VII The Canonization of Book-Magic 58 

VIII The Conquest of Culture in America 63 

IX Smith, Jones and Robinson 69 

X Employer vs. Trade Unionist 74 

XI The Goose-Step 77 

XII The Gary Plan 80 

XIII Learning to Work 83 

XIV Learning to Play 90 
XV First and Last Things 96 

XVI The Child as Artist 100 

XVII The Artist as a Child 115 

[ix] 



Contents 

XVIII The Drama of Education 124 

XIX The Drama of Life 132 

XX Curiosity 137 

XXI The Right to be Wrong 149 

XXII Enterprise 157 

XXIII Democracy 167 

XXIV Responsibility 173 
XXV Love 180 

XXVI Education in 1947 A. d. 190 



[x] 



Were You Ever 
a Child? 



Were You Ever a Child? 

WERE you ever a child? . . . 
I ask out of no indecent curiosity as 
to your past. But I wish to address 
only those who would naturally be interested in 
the subject of Education. Those who haven't 
been children themselves are in many respects 
fortunate beings ; but they lack the background of 
bitter experience which makes this, to the rest of 
us, an acutely interesting theme — and they might 
just as well stop reading right here. I pause to 
allow them to put the book aside. . . . 

With my remaining audience, fit though few, I 
feel that I can get down at once to the brass tacks 
of the situation. We have all been educated — 
and just look at us ! 

We ourselves, as products of an educational 
system, are sufficiently damning evidence against 
it. If we think of what we happily might have 
been, and then of what we are, we cannot but con- 
cede the total failure or the helpless inadequacy 

[9] 



Were You Ever a Child "? 
of our education to educe those possibilities of 
ours into actuality. 

Looking back on those years upon years which 
we spent in school, we know that something was 
wrong. In this respect our adult convictions find 
impressive support in our earlier views on the 
subject. If we will remember, we did not, at 
the time, exactly approve of the school system. 
Many of us, in fact, went in for I. W. W. tactics 

— especially sabotage. Our favourite brand of 
sabotage was the '' withdrawal of efficiency " — 
in our case a kind of instinctive passive resistance. 
Amiable onlookers, such as our parents or the 
board of education, might have thought that we 
were learning something all the while ; but that's 
just where we fooled 'em I There were, of course, 
a few of us who really learned and remembered 
everything — who could state off-hand, right now, 
if anybody asked us, in what year Norman the 
Conqueror landed in England. But the trouble 
is that so few people ask us 1 

There was one bit of candour in our schooling 

— at its very end. They called that ending a 
Commencement. And so indeed we found it. 
Bewildered, unprepared, out of touch with the 
realities, we commenced then and there to learn 
what life is like. We found it discouraging or 

[lO] 



Were You Ever a Child? 

Inspiriting in a thousand ways ; but the thing which 
struck us at the time most forcibly was that it was 
in every respect quite unlike school. The values 
which had obtained there, did not exist outside. 
One could not cram for a job as if it were an 
examination; one could not get in the good graces 
of a machine as if it were a teacher; the docility 
which won high '* marks '' in school was called 
lack of enterprise in the business world, dulness 
in social life, stupidity in the realm of love. The 
values of real life were new and different. We 
had been quite carefully prepared to go on study- 
ing and attending classes and taking examinations; 
but the real world was not like that. It was full 
of adventure and agony and beauty; its politics 
were not in the least like the pages of the Civics 
Text-Book; its journalism and literature had pur- 
poses and methods undreamed of by the professor 
who compiled (from other text-books compiled 
by other professors) the English Composition 
Book; going on the road for a wholesale house 
was a geographical emprise into whose fearful 
darknesses even the Advanced Geography Course 
threw no assisting light; the economics of court- 
ship and marriage and parenthood had somehow 
been overlooked by the man who Lectured upon 
that Subject. 

[II] 



Were You Ever a Child? 

Whether we had studied our lessons or not; 
whether we had passed our examinations tri- 
umphantly, or just got through by the skin of our 
teeth — what difference did it make, to us or to 
the world? And what to us now are those tri- 
umphs and humiliations, the failure or success of 
school, except a matter of occasional humorous 
reminiscence? 

What would we think of a long and painful and 
expensive surgical operation of which it could be 
said afterward that it made not the slightest dif- 
ference to the patient whether it succeeded or 
failed? Yet, judged by results in later life, the 
difference between failing and succeeding in school 
is merely the difference between a railroad colli- 
sion and a steamboat explosion, as described by 
Uncle Tom : 

** If you's in a railroad smash-up, why — thar 
yo' is ! But if yo's in a steamboat bus'-up, why — 
whar is yo'? " 

It is our task, however, to investigate this con- 
fused catastrophe, and fix the responsibility for 
its casualties. 



[12] 



I. The Child 

EDUCATION, as popularly conceived, in- 
cludes as its chief ingredients a Child, a 
Building, Text-Books, and a Teacher. 
Obviously, one of them must be to blame for its 
going wrong. Let us see if it is the Child. We 
will put him on the witness stand : 

Q. Who are you? 

A. I am a foreigner in a strange land. 

Q. What I 

A. Please, sir, that's what everybody says. 
Sometimes they call me a little angel; the poet 
Wordsworth says that I come trailing clouds of 
glory from Heaven which is my home. On the 
other hand, I am often called a little devil; and 
when you see the sort of things I do in the comic 
supplements, you will perhaps be inclined to accept 
that description. I really don't know which is 
right, but both opinions seem to agree that I am 
an immigrant. 

Q. Speak up so that the jury can hear. Have 
you any friends in this country? 

[13] 



Were You Ever a Child ^ 

A. No, sir — not exactly. But there are two 
people, a woman and a man, natives of this land, 
who for some reason take an interest in me. It 
was they who taught me to speak the language. 
They also taught me many of the customs of the 
country, which at first I could not understand. 
For instance, my preoccupation with certain nat- 
ural — [the rest of the sentence stricken from the 
record]. 

Q. You need not go into such matters. I 
fear you still have many things to learn about the 
customs of the country. One of them is not to 
allude to that side of life in public. 

A. Yes, sir; so those two people tell me. I'm 
sure I don't see why. It seems to me a very 
interesting and important — 

Q. That will do. Now as to those people 
who are looking after you: Are your relations 
with them agreeable? 

A. Nominally, yes. But I must say that they 
have treated me in a very peculiar way, which 
has aroused in me a deep resentment. You see, 
at first they treated me like a king — in fact, like 
a Kaiser. I had only to wave my hand and they 
came running to know what it was I wanted. 1 
uttered certain magic syllables in my own lan- 
guage, and they prostrated themselves before me, 

[14] 



i\ 



The Child 

offering me gifts. When they brought the wrong 
gifts, I doubled up my fists and twisted my face, 
and gave vent to loud cries — and they became 
still more abject, until at last I was placated. 

Q. That is what is called parental love. 
What then? 

A. I naturally regarded them as my slaves. 
But presently they rebelled. One of them, of 
whom I had been particularly fond, commenced 
to make me drink milk from a bottle instead of 
from — 

Q. Yes, yes, we understand. And you re- 
sented that? 

A. I withdrew the light of my favour from 
her for a long time. I expressed my disappoint- 
ment in her. I offered freely to pardon her de- 
linquency if she would acknowledge her fault and 
resume her familiar duties. But perhaps I did 
not succeed in conveying my meaning clearly, for 
at this time I had no command of her language. 
At any rate, my efforts were useless. And her 
reprehensible conduct was only the first of a series 
of what seemed to me indignities and insults. I 
was no longer a king. I was compelled to obey 
my own slaves. In vain I made the old magic 
gestures, uttered the old talismanic commands — 
in vain even my doubling up of fists and twisting 

[15] 



Were You Ever a Child? 

of face and loud outcries; the power was gone 
from these things. Yet not quite all the power — 
for my crying was at least a sort of punishment 
to them, and as such I often inflicted it upon them. 

Q. You were a naughty child. 

A. So they told me. But I only felt aggrieved 
at my new helplessness, and wished to recover 
somewhat of my old sense of power over them. 
But as I gradually acquired new powers I lost 
in part my feeling of helplessness. I also 
found that there were other beings like myself, 
and we conducted magic ceremonies together in 
which we transformed ourselves and our sur- 
roundings at will. These delightful enterprises 
were continually being interrupted by those other 
people, our parents, who insisted on our learning 
ever more and more of their own customs. They 
wished us to be interested in their activities, and 
they were pleased when we asked questions about 
things we did not understand. Yet there were 
some questions which they would not answer, or 
which they rebuked us for asking, or to which 
they returned replies that, after consultation 
among ourselves, we decided were fabulous. So 
we were compelled to form our own theories about 
these things. We asked, for instance — 

Q. Please confine your answers to the ques- 
[i6] 



The Child 

tions. That Is another matter not spoken of In 
public; though to be quite frank with you, public 
taste seems* to be* changing somewhat In this re- 
spect. 

A. I am very glad to hear It. I would like 
to know — 

Q. Not now, not now. — You say you have 
learned by this time many of the customs of the 
country ? 

A. Oh, yes, sir I I can dress myself, and wash 
my face (though perhaps not in a manner quite 
above criticism), count the change which the 
grocer gives mc, tell the time by a clock, say 
'* Yes, ma'am " and ** Thank you '' — and I am 
beginning to be adept In the great national game 
of baseball. 

Q. Have you decided what you would do if 
you were permitted to take part in our adult ac- 
tivities ? 

A. I would like to be a truck-driver. 

Q. Why? 

A. Because he can whip the big horses. 

Q. Do you know anything about machin- 
ery? 

A. No, sir; I knew a boy who had a steam- 
engine, but he moved away before I got a chance 
to see how it worked. 

[17] 



Were You Ever a Child? 

Q. You spoke of truck-driving just now. Do 
you know where the truck-driver is going with his 
load? 

A. No, sir. 

Q. Do you know where he came from? 

A. No, sir. 

Q. Do you know what a factory is? 

A. Yes, sir; Jim's father got three fingers cut 
off in a factory. 

Q. Do you know where the sun rises and sets? 

A. It rises in the East and sets in the West. 

Q. How does it get from the West back to 
the East during the night? 

A. It goes under the earth. 

Q. How? 

A. It digs a tunnel! 

Q. What does it dig the tunnel with? 

A. With its claws. 

Q. Who was George Washington? 

A. He was the Father of his country, and he 
never told a lie. 

Q. Would you like to be a soldier? 

A. Yes. 

Q. If we let you take part in the government 
of our country, what ticket would you vote ? 

A. The Republican ticket. My father is a 
Republican. 

[i8] 



The Child 

Q. What would you do if you had ten cents? 

A. Fd go to see Charley Chaplin in the mov- 
ing-picture show. 

Q. Thank you. You can step down. 

A. Yes, sir. Where is my ten cents? 

And now, gentlemen, you have heard the wit- 
ness. He has told the truth — and nothing but 
the truth — and he would have told the whole 
truth if I had not been vigilant in defence of your 
modesty. He is, as he says, a foreigner, incom- 
pletely naturalized. In certain directions his de- 
velopment has proceeded rapidly. He shows a 
patriotism and a sense of political principles which 
are quite as mature as most of ours. But in 
other directions there is much to be desired. He 
does not know what kind of world it is he lives 
in, nor has he any knowledge of how he could 
best take his place, with the most satisfaction to 
himself and his fellow-men, in that world — 
whether as farmer or engineer, poet or police- 
man, or in the humbler but none the less necessary 
capacities of dustman or dramatic critic. 

It would be idle for us to pretend that we think 
it will be easy for him to learn all this. But 
without this knowledge he is going to be a nuisance 
— not without a certain charm (indeed, I know 
several individuals who have remained children 

[19] 



Were You Ever a Child^ 

all their lives, and they are the most delightful 
of companions for an idle hour), but still, by 
reason of incapacity and irresponsibility, an un- 
desirable burden upon the community: unable to 
support himself, and simply not to be trusted in 
the responsible relations of marriage and parent- 
hood. We simply can't let him remain in his 
present state of ignorance. 

And yet, how is he ever going to be taught? 
You have seen just about how far private enter- 
prise is likely to help him. That man and woman 
of whom he told us have other things to do be- 
sides teach him. And if he is turned over to 
special private institutions, we have no guarantee 
that they will not take advantage of his helpless- 
ness, keep him under their control and rob him of 
freedom of movement for a long term of years, 
set him to learning a mass of fabulous or irrelevant 
information, instil in him a fictitious sense of its 
value by a system of prizes and punishments, and 
finally turn him out into our world no better pre- 
pared to take his proper part in it than he was 
before; and thus, having wasted his own time, he 
would have to waste ours by compelling us to 
teach him all over again. 

In fact, the difficulty of dealing with him ap- 
pears so great that I am moved to make the states- 

[20] 



The Child 

manlike proposal — never before, I believe, pre- 
sented to the public — of passing a law which will 
prevent this kind of undesirable immigration alto- 
gether. 

Shall we abolish the Child? 

The only other reasonable alternative Is for us 
to undertake this difficult and delicate business of 
education ourselves — assume as a public respon- 
sibility the provision of a full opportunity for this 
helpless, wistful, stubborn little barbarian to find 
out about the world and about himself. Well, 
shall we do that? 

Let us not allow any false sentimentality to af- 
fect our decision. . . . 

The vote seems to be In favour of giving him 
his chance. Very well ! 



[21] 



II. The School Building 

IT is clear that what is most of all the matter 
with the child is his sense of helplessness. 
. . . He told us how he lost inevitably his 
position of King in the magic realm of infancy — 
a kingship only to be recovered fragmentarily in 
dreams and in the fantasies of play — how he dis- 
covered himself to be little and weak and clumsy 
and ignorant of the ways of the strange real 
world. It is clear too that the chief difference 
which separates us from childhood is the acquisi- 
tion of a few powers, physical and intellectual, 
which make us feel to some extent masters of our 
world. 

Does not education, then, first of all consist in 
giving to children a progressive sense of power, 
through a physical and intellectual mastery of 
their environment? And would not the acquisi- 
tion of an adequately increasing mastership de- 
prive the child of any need for those outbursts 
of rage and malice and mischief which are today 

[22] 



I 



The School Building 

the most characteristic trait of childhood, and 
which are only his attempt to deny his shameful 
helplessness? Shall we not try at the outset to 
make the child feel that he is a useful and impor- 
tant part of our world? 

The answer to these questions being *' Yes," 
we now turn to the building in which what now 
passes for education is conducted, and inquire 
whether it answers this primary requirement. 

But first of all, let us free our minds from any 
lingering superstitions we may cherish with ref- 
erence to school buildings. Let us get over the 
notion that school-buildings are sacrosanct, like 
churches. I am inclined to think that we have 
transferred to the school building some of our 
traditional respect for churches. We feel that it 
is a desecration to allow dances and political meet- 
ings to be held there. We seem to regard with 
jealous pride the utter emptiness and uselessness 
of our school buildings after hours; it is a kind of 
ceremonial wastefulness which appeals to some 
deep-seated ridiculous barbaric sense of religious 
taboo in us. Well, we must get over it if we are 
to give the children a square deal. If it should 
turn out that the school building is wrong, we must 
be prepared to abolish it. 

And we must get over our notion that a school 

[23] 



Were You Ever a Child ^ 

building is necessary in order for a school to exist. 
The most famous school in the world had no build- 
ing at all — only a stretch of outdoors, with some 
grass and a few plane trees. Of course, the 
Greeks were fonder of the open air than we are, 
and their winters were less severe. And then, too, 
the Greek idea of education was simpler than ours. 
It comprised simply athletics and philosophy and 
one or two other aristocratic subjects which I for- 
get at the moment — art being regarded as man- 
ual labour, just as the drama was considered a 
religious function, and government a kind of com- 
munal festivity! And, of course, the Persian 
theory of education — to be able to ride, shoot, 
and tell the truth — could be carried out under 
the open sky better than anywhere else. But our 
aims are more elaborate, and it may very well be 
true — in fact, I have been convinced of it all 
along — that much of our educational process 
should be carried on indoors. 

But let us not be too hasty in conceding the 
School Building's right to existence. There is an- 
other side to the question. 

The trouble is, once you give a School Building 
permission to exist, it straightway commences to 
put on semi-sacerdotal airs — as if it were a kind 
of outcast but repentant church. It arranges it- 

[24] 



The School Building 

self into dingy little secular chapels, with a kind 
of furtive pulpit in front for the teacher, and a lot 
of individual pews for the mourners. It makes 
the chemistry laboratory, which it regards as a 
profane intruder, feel cramped and uncomfort- 
able; it puts inconveniences in the way of the 
gymnasium; and it is dreadfully afraid some one 
will think that the assembly hall will look like a 
theatre; while as for carpentry and printing shops, 
ateliers for sculpture groups, and a furnace for 
the pottery class, it feels that it has lost caste ut- 
terly if it is forced to admit them ; nor will it con- 
descend to acknowledge such a thing as a kitchen- 
garden in its back yard as having any relation to 
itself. You can well understand that if it has 
these familiar adjuncts of everyday life, it will 
seem just like part of the ordinary world; and so 
it tries its hardest to keep them out, and generally 
succeeds pretty well. 

But since what we started out to do was to 
teach children what the world of reality is like, 
it is necessary that they should be in and of the 
real world. And since the real world outside is 
not, unfortunately, fully available for educational 
purposes, it is necessary to provide them with the 
real world on a smaller scale — a world in which 
they can, without danger, familiarize themselves 

[25] 



Were You Ever a Child? 
with their environment in its essential aspects — 
a world which is theirs to observe, touch, handle, 
take apart and put back together again, play with, 
work with, and become master of; a world in 
which they have no cause to feel helpless or weak 
or useless or unimportant; a world from which 
they can go into the great world outside without 
any abrupt transition — a world, in short, in 
which they can learn to be efficient and happy hu- 
man beings. 

The School Building, imposing upon our cre- 
dulity and pretending to be too sacred for these 
purposes, needs to be taken down from its pedes- 
tal. It may be permitted to have a share in the 
education of our youth if it will but remember that 
it is no more important in that process than a 
garden, a swimming tank, a playground, the 
library around the corner, the woods where the 
botany class goes, or the sky overhead that ex- 
hibits its constellations gladly at the request of the 
science teacher. Let it humble itself while there 
is yet time, and not expect its little guests to keep 
silence within its walls as if they were in a church, 
for it may even yet be overthrown — and replaced 
by a combination theatre-gymnasium-studio-office- 
and-model-factory building. And then it will be 
sorry ! 

[26] 



IIL The Teacher 

SHALL the Teacher be abolished? . . . 
What's that you say? — Oh, but surely 
not before she has had a hearing! — the 
worst criminal deserves that much consideration. 
I beg of you to let me speak one moment in her 
behalf. — Ah, thank you, my friends. 

(Sister, you had a tight squeak just then! If 
it hadn't been for my presence of mind and my 
habitual coolness in the presence of infuriated 
mobs, I hate to think what would have happened. 
— And now let me see: what can I say in your 
behalf? H'm. . . . H'm. . . .) 

My friends, this unhappy woman (for we shall 
centre our attention on the female of the species) 
is more sinned against than sinning. Reflect! 
The status of women in the United States has 
changed in the last fifty years. Modern industry 
has almost utterly destroyed the old pioneer home 
with its partnership-marriage; ambitious young 
men no longer have an economic need for capable 

[27] 



Were You Ever a Child? 

women-partners; women have lost their wonted 
economic value as potential helpers, and their ca- 
pacity for motherhood appears to the largest sec- 
tion of young manhood in the aspect of a danger 
rather than a blessing. Women have, to be sure, 
acquired a new value, in the eyes of a smaller class 
of economically ** arrived " men, as a sign of their 
** arrival '' — that is, they are desired as adver- 
tisements of their husbands' economic status. In 
one sense, the task of demonstrating the extent of 
a husband's income is easier than the pioneer task 
of helping take care of a farm and raising a house- 
ful of babies; but, after all, such a career does re- 
quire either natural talent or a high degree of 
training in the graceful habits of conspicuous idle- 
ness and honorific extravagance. And, whether 
it is that the vast majority of women spurned such 
a career as an essentially immoral one, or whether 
they were not really up to its requirements, or 
whether the demand was found to be more than 
met by the hordes of candidates turned out yearly 
by the boarding-schools — whatever the reason, 
the fact remains that a large number of women 
began to see the necessity and to conceive the de- 
sirability of some career other than marriage. 
But industrial evolution, which had destroyed their 
former opportunities, had failed to make any con- 

[28] 



The Teacher 

siderable or at least any decent room for them in 
the industrial scheme. M'ost particularly was 
this true for the young women of the middle class. 
They were unable to go into the professions or 
the respectable trades, and unwilling (for excel- 
lent reasons) to enter the factories; they were 
given no opportunity to learn how to do anything 
— they were (quite against their will, but in- 
evitably) condemned to profound ignorance of the 
most important things in the world — work and 
love; and so, naturally, they became Teachers. 

The world did not want them, and so they 
stayed out of the world, in that drab, quasi-re- 
ligious edifice, the School Building, and prepared 
others to go into the world. . . . 

Good Heavens! do you suppose for a minute, 
if this unfortunate woman had known enough 
about Anything in Particular to get a respectable 
job outside, that she would have stayed in there 
to teach Everything in General?^ Do you sup- 
pose she wants to be a Teacher? Do you suppose 
she likes pretending to be adept in a dozen diffi- 
cult subjects at once, inflicting an impossible ideal 

1 It will, I hope, be clear that these remarks apply specifi- 
cally to the grammar school teacher who does have to teach 
everything. The case is less desperate in the higher reaches 
of our school system. 

[29] 



Were You Ever a Child? 

of ^^ order '' upon the forty restless children whom 
her weary, amateur, underpaid efforts at instruc- 
tion have failed to interest, spending her days in 
the confronting of an impossible task and her 
nights in the *' correcting " of an endless series of 
written proofs of her failure — and, on top of 
that, being denied most of her human rights? 
The munition-factory girls at least had their fling 
when the day's work was over; but she is ex- 
pected to be a Vestal. In some places she can't 
get married without losing her job; in New York, 
if she is married, she can't have a baby! No — 
it is her misfortune, not her fault, that she is what 
she is. 

In fact, I think that if we could have managed 
to keep the war going a little longer, she would 
have pretty much abolished herself. Abdication 
is becoming popular, and she among all the mon- 
archs is not the least uncomfortable and re- 
stricted and hedged in by useless divinity. Her 
abdication will be as disturbing an event as the 
Russian Revolution. The Russians were accus- 
tomed to their Czar; but they just had to learn to 
get along without him. And perhaps a similar 
lesson is in store for us. . . . 

You find it a little difficult to imagine what 
School would be like without Teachers? Well, 

[30] 



The Teacher 
for one thing, it would be more like the rest of 
the world than it is now — and that, we agreed, 
was what we wanted. Where else, indeed, ex- 
cept in School, do you find Teachers? The rest 
of the world manages to get along without them 
very well. Perhaps it is merely a superstition 
that they are needed in School! Let us inquire 
into the matter. 

What do people in the outside world do when 
they want to learn something? They go to some- 
body who knows about it, and ask him. They do 
not go to somebody who is reputed to know about 
everything — except, when they are very young, 
to their parents: and they speedily become dis- 
illusioned about that variety of ominiscience. 
They go to somebody who might reasonably be 
expected to know about the particular thing they 
are interested in. When a man buys a motor-car, 
he does not say to himself: *' Where can I find 
somebody who can teach me how to run a motor- 
car and dance the tango and predict a rise on the 
stock-^market? " He does not look in the tele- 
phone directory under T. He just gets an ex- 
perienced driver to teach him. And when the 
driver tells him that this is the self-starter, and 
proceeds to start the car with it, a confidence is 
established which makes him inclined to believe 

[31] 



Were You Ever a Child? 

all he can understand of what he is presently told 
about the mysterious functions of the carburetor. 
He does not even inquire if the man has taken 
vows of celibacy. He just pays attention and 
asks questions and tries to do the thing himself, 
until he learns. 

But this case, of course, assumes an interest of 
the pupil in the subject, a willingness and even a 
desire to learn about it, a feeling that the matter 
is of some importance to himself. And come to 
think of it, these motives are generally present 
in the learning that goes on in the outside world. 
It is only in School that the pupil is expected to be 
unwilling to learn. 

When you were a child, and passed the door of 
the village blacksmith shop, and looked in, day 
after day, you saw the blacksmith heating a 
piece of iron red hot in the furnace, or twist- 
ing it deftly with his pincers, or dropping it 
sizzling into a tub of water, or paring a 
horse's hoofs, or hammering in the silvery 
nails with swift blows; you admired his skill, 
and stood in awe of his strength; and if he 
had offered to let you blow the bellows for him 
and shown you how to twist a red-hot penny, that 
w^ould have been a proud moment. It would also 
have been an educational one. But suppose there 

[32] 



i 



The Teacher 

had been a new shop set up in the town, and when 
you looked in at the open door you saw a man at 
work painting a picture ; and suppose a bell rang 
just then, and the man stopped painting right in 
the middle of a brush-stroke, and commenced to 
read aloud *' How They Brought the Good News 
from Ghent to Aix''; and suppose when he was 
half way through, the bell rang again, and he 
said, '' We will gb on with that tomorrow,'' and 
commenced to chisel the surface of a piece of 
marble; and then, after a little, somewhat ex- 
haustedly, started in to play '' The Rock of Ages " 
on a flute, interrupting the tune to order you to 
stand up straight and not whisper to the little 
boy beside you. There's no doubt what you 
would think of him; you would know perfectly 
well that he was crazy; people don't do things In 
that way anywhere In the world, except in school. 
And even If he had assured you that painting and 
poetry, sculpture and music, were later in your 
life going to be matters of the deepest importance 
and interest, and that you should start in now with 
the determination of becoming proficient in the 
arts, It would not have helped much. Not very 
much. 

It's nonsense that children do not want to learn. 
Everybody wants to learn. And everybody wants 

[33] 



Were You Ever a Child ^ 

to teach. And the process is going on all the 
time. All that is necessary is to put a person 
who knows something — really knows it — within 
the curiosity-range of some one w^ho doesn't 
know it: the process commences at once. It is 
almost irresistible. In the interest of previous 
engagements one has to tear one's self away from 
all sorts of opportunities to learn things which 
may never be of the slightest use but which never- 
theless are alluring precisely because one does 
not know them. 

People talk about children being hard to teach, 
and In the next breath deplore the facility with 
which they acquire the '* vices.'' That seems 
strange. It takes as much patience, energy and 
faithful application to become proficient in a vice 
as it does to learn mathematics. Yet consider 
how much more popular poker is than equations ! 
But did a schoolboy ever drop in on a group of 
teachers who had sat up all night parsing, say, 
a sentence in Henry James, or seeing who could 
draw the best map of the North Atlantic States? 
And when you come to think of it, it seems ex- 
tremely improbable that any little boy ever learned 
to drink beer by seeing somebody take a table- 
spoonful once a day. 

I think that if there were no teachers — no 

[34] 



The Teacher 

hastily and superficially trained Vestals who were 
supposed to know everything — but just ordinary 
human beings who knew passionately and thor- 
oughly one thing (but you'd be surprised to find 
what a lot of other knowledge that would inci- 
dentally comprise!) and who had the patience to 
show little boys and girls how to do that thing — 
we might get along without Immaculate Omnis- 
cience pretty well. Of course, we'd have to pay 
them more, because they could get other jobs out 
in the larger world; and besides, you couldn't ex- 
pect to get somebody who knows how to do some- 
thing, for the price you are accustomed to pay 
those who only know how to teach everything. 

Nor need the change necessarily be abrupt. It 
could probably be effected with considerable suc- 
cess by firing all the teachers at the beginning of 
the summer vacations, and engaging their services 
as human beings for the next year. Many of 
them would find no difficulty at all in readjusting 
themselves. . . . 



[35] 



IV. The Book 

OF the ingredients of the educational catas- 
trophe, the only one remaining to be dis- 
cussed is the Book. Is it to blame for 
the failure of the process which has brought us 
to our present state of elaborate ignorance, and 
ought it to be abolished? 

What have books got to do with education, 
anyway ? 

Not half as much as most people think! If 
education is learning to be a civilized human be- 
ing, books have their place in it. But civilized 
life is composed of a number of things besides 
books — it contains machinery, art, political or- 
ganization, handicraft, flowers and birds, and 
other things too numerous to mention, all of 
which are notoriously capable of being learned 
about in the great world outside without the use 
of books. If in the great world outside the 
school, then why not in the little world inside the 
school? 

Not that the use of books should be ever 

[36] 



I 



The Book 

avoided anywhere for the sake of the avoidance. 
Books are a convenience — or an inconvenience, 
as the case may be. Like other valuable human 
utilities, they are frequently a nuisance if obtruded 
in the place of better things. Every intelligent 
person has the same attitude toward books that he 
has toward his sweetheart's photograph : if she is 
out of reach, if the picture furnishes him his only 
way of seeing her, he values it profoundly; but 
if she is in the next room, he does not linger with 
the image. True, he may fall in love with the 
picture first — the picture may reveal to him the 
girl whom otherwise he might never have appre- 
ciated; and books do make us appreciate aspects 
of reality which we have neglected. But in educa- 
tion books are not an adequate substitute for di- 
rect contact with the realities with which they deal, 
precisely because they do not give the sense of 
power which only comes from direct contact with 
reality. It is the function of books to assist in 
that educational contact — not to take the place 
of it. 

There is, indeed, a sense in which books are 
the most egregious fraud ever perpetrated upon 
a world hungry for the knowledge which is power. 
I am reminded of the scene in *' The Wild Duck," 
when the father returns home from a grand din- 

[37] 



Were You Ever a Child? 

ner party. He has promised to bring his little 
daughter some sweetmeats or cake — and he has 
forgotten to do so. But — he grandly draws 
from his pocket a piece of printed matter — 
*' Here, my child, is the menu: you can sit down 
and read about the whole dinner ! " Poor little 
Hedvig knew that she wasn't getting anything to 
eat; but some of us don't realize that for years 
and years; we dutifully masticate the innutritious 
contents of text-books while we are starving for a 
taste of reality. 

Take geography, for instance. I know quite 
well that it was not the intention of the author of 
the text-book which I studied that I should con- 
ceive the state of Illinois as yellow and the neigh- 
bouring state of Indiana as pale green: but I do 
to this day. They were not realities to me, but 
pictures in a book; and they were not realities be- 
cause they had no relation whatever to real ex- 
perience. If I had been asked to draw a map of 
the school grounds, with the boys' side distin- 
guished by one colour and the girls' by another, 
that convention would thereafter have seemed 
only what it was. If I had drawn a map of the 
town I lived in, I would have been thenceforth 
unable, I am sure, to see a map without feeling 
the realities of stream and wood and hill and 

[38] 



The Book 

house and farm of which it is a conventional ab- 
straction. I would, in short, have learned some- 
thing about geography. The very word would 
have acquired a fascinating significance — the de- 
piction of the surface of the earth! whereas all the 
word geography actually means to me now is — 
a large flat book. And if an aviator should stop 
me and ask which is the way to Illinois, I couldn't 
for my life tell him: but if you brought me that 
old geography book and opened it to the map of 
the United States, I could put my finger on Il- 
linois in the dark! You see, Illinois is for me 
not a part of the real world — it is a yellow pic- 
ture in a large flat book. 

In the same way, I have the impression that the 
American Revolution happened in a certain thick 
book bound in red cloth — not by any chance in 
the New York and New England whose streets 
I have walked in. (And, for that matter, as I 
have later discovered, much of the American Rev- 
olution of the school histories — such as the 
Boston Tea-Party as described — did not happen 
anywhere except in the pages of such text-books). 
The only thing I know about the crossing of the 
Delaware, for example, is that it is a Leading 
Fact of American History, and occurred on the 
right hand page, a little below and to the left of 

[39] 



Were You Ever a Child? 

a picture. And this conception of historical 
events as a series of sentences occurring in a cer- 
tain order on a certain page, seems to me the in- 
evitable consequence of learning history from a 
text-book. 

There are other objections to the use of text- 
books. One is their frequent perversion or sup- 
pression of truth for moral, patriotic or senti- 
mental reasons : in this respect they are like prac- 
tically all books intended for children. They are 
generally pot-boilers written by men of no stand- 
ing in the intellectual or even in the scholastic 
world. But even when a text-book is written by 
a man of real learning, the absence of a critical 
audience of his equals seems often to deprive him 
of a stimulus necessary to good writing, and leave 
him free to indulge in long-repressed childish- 
nesses of his own which he would never dare ex- 
hibit to a mature public. And even when text- 
books are neither grossly incompetent nor pal- 
pably dishonest, there is nevertheless almost in- 
variably something cheap and trashy about their 
composition which repels the student who can 
choose his own books. Why should they be in- 
flicted upon helpless children? 

Even if all text-books were miracles of accu- 
racy and order, even if they all showed literary 

[40] 



i 



The Book 

talent of a high degree, their usefulness would 
still be in question. If children are to be given a 
sense of the reality of the events which they study, 
they must get some feeling of contact with the 
facts. And to this project the use of a text-book 
is fatal. Let us turn to history once more. I 
take it that a text-book of history, as intended and 
as used, is a book which tells everything which it 
is believed necessary for the pupil to know. 
Right there it divorces itself, completely and ir- 
revocably, from the historical category. His- 
tory is not a statement of what people ought to 
know. History is an inquiry into the nature and 
relationship and significance of past events. Not 
a pronouncement upon these things, but a search- 
ing into them. Now the outstanding fact about 
past events is that they happened some time ago. 
The historian does not, to begin with, know what 
happened, let alone how and why it happened. 
He is dependent upon other people's reports. His 
chief task is often to determine the comparative 
accuracy of these various reports. And when we 
read the writings of a real historian, the sense of 
contact we have with the events under discussion 
comes from our feeling that we have listened to 
a crowd of contrary witnesses, and, with our 
author's assistance, got at the truth behind their 

[41] 



Were You Ever a Child? 

words. More than that, the historian himself is 
addressing you, not as if he thought you had never 
read anything on the subject before and never 
would again, but with implicit or explicit refer- 
ence to the opinions of other historians. He is 
himself only one of a crowd of witnesses, from all 
of whose testimony he expects you to form your 
own opinion of those past events which none of 
you will ever meet face to face. 

Compare this with the school text-book. It 
was evidently written by Omniscience Itself, for 
it does not talk as if the facts were in the shghtest 
doubt, as if there were any two opinions about 
them, as if it were necessary to inquire into the 
past to find out something about it. It does not 
condescend to offer an opinion in agreement or in 
controversy with the views of others. It does 
not confess any difficulty in arriving at a just con- 
clusion. No — it says This happened and That 
happened. Perhaps it is all true as gospel. But 
facts so presented are abstractions, devoid of the 
warmth and colour of reality. Even the schools 
have learned how uninteresting dates are. But 
they do not realize that dates are uninteresting 
because, since nobody can possibly doubt them, 
it does no good whatever to believe in them. It 
is only those truths which need the assistance of 

[42] 



The Book 

our belief that engage our interest. It is only 
then that they concern us. We are interested 
in politics because it is the process of making up 
our minds about the future ; and we are interested 
in history, when we are interested, because it is 
the process of making up our minds about the past. 

By eliminating the text-book, or by using it 
simply as a convenient syllabus and chronological 
guide to an inquiry into the significance and re- 
lationship of the events of the past, with the aid 
of every good historical work available for refer- 
ence, the study of history would become a matter 
of concern to the pupil; and the past, looked at 
from several angles, and down a felt perspective 
of time, would become real. 

I am aware that this is done in the higher 
flights of the educational system. But why is it 
that the easy and profitable methods of learning 
are put off so long and the hardest and most profit- 
less forced upon children? Is it that easier learn- 
ing means harder teaching? I am not sure of 
that; the only difficulty about such a method as 
I have described would be in the mere change 
from the old to the new. No, I think the real 
trouble lies in the superstition of the Book. 

This may be seen in the teaching of mathe- 
matics. Before they come to school, children 

[43] 



Were You Ever a Child? 

have usually learned to count, and learned easily 
because they were counting real objects. The 
objective aspect of mathematics is almost imme- 
diately lost sight of in school. Even the black- 
board affords no release from the book, for who 
ever saw a blackboard outside a schoolroom? 
Mathematics comes to seem something horribly 
useless. The child simply does not believe that 
people ever go through these tortures when they 
grow up. Even the suggestive fables into which 
the '* examples " are sometimes cast, fail to con- 
vince him. ^^ If a carpenter — " ** A salesman 
has — '' But he is neither a carpenter nor a sales- 
man. He is a weary child, and he is not going to 
pretend to be a carpenter or a salesman unless he 
gets some fun out of it. The thing about a car- 
penter or a salesman which appeals to the child's 
imagination is something other than mathematics. 
No, the printed word does not suffice. But let 
him be a carpenter or salesman for the nonce, let 
him with saw or sugar-scoop in hand find it to be 
necessary to add, subtract, multiply, divide and 
deal in fractions, and he will rise undaunted to 
the occasion. And, having found in actual prac- 
tice just what his difficulties are, he will cheer- 
fully use book and blackboard. Where there's 
a will there's a way, and mathematics has only to 

[44] 



The Book 

come to seem a desirable acquisition to become an 
easily mastered one. I should say that the ideal 
way of teaching a boy of eight mathematics — 
including, if necessary, trigonometry — is as a 
part of the delightful task of constructing a motor- 
cycle. I remember that I gained in twenty-four 
hours an insight into the mysteries of English 
grammar which I had failed to get in the 1200 
odd lessons previously inflicted on me in school — 
and I gained that insight in writing my first short 
story. When an effect that you yourself want to 
achieve depends on a preposition or a fraction, 
then, and only then, are such things humanly worth 
knowing. 

If you want to see the most terrific and damning 
criticism of text-books, open one of them which 
has been used by a child, and see it written there 
on the margins in fretful and meandering curle- 
ques, which say as plainly as the handwriting on 
Belshazzar's wall, '* I have weighed this book 
in the balance and found it wanting. It does not 
interest me. It leaves my spirit vexed and im- 
patient." I have estimated that the scrawl-work 
in a single average schoolbook, if unwound and 
placed end to end, would extend along the Lincoln 
Highway from Weehawken, N. J., to Davenport, 
la.; while the total energy which goes into the 

[45] 



Were You Ever a Child ^ 

making of these scrawls each day in the public 
schools of New York City alone, would be suffi- 
cient to hoist a grand piano to the top of the 
Woolworth building. The grand total for the 
United States of the soul-power that dribbles out 
into these ugly pencilings, amounts to a huge Ni- 
agara of wasted energy. 

The Book, as the centre of our educational 
process, must be demoted. It Is a good servant, 
but a bad master. And only as a servant can it be 
tolerated — as an adjunct to the gardens and 
workshops and laboratories and kitchens and 
studios and playgrounds of the school-world. 



[4«] 



I 



V^ The Magic Theory of 
Education 

BUT these are not the only superstitions 
which have muddled the educational proc- 
ess. You have heard that favourite 
speech of the condemned criminal: *' I never 
had no education." 

He does not refer to moral education; he is not 
complaining that he was never instructed as to 
the sacredness of life and private property. He 
means that he never studied arithmetic and 
geography and spelling — or not enough to men- 
tion. He means that geography, etc., would have 
saved him from a life of crime and a finish behind 
the bars. 

And you have heard some unlettered parent, 
come from a foreign shore, repeat over and over : 

'*My boy, he get education. I no have educa- 
tion. But my boy — he get education." Or 
words to that effect. 

True ; his boy will have a better chance than he 

[47] 



Were You Ever a Child? 

himself had; he may become President of the 
United States or of a Fruit Trust. And it is 
equally true of the other man, that if he had 
learned arithmetic in school instead of sneak- 
thievery from the Carmine street gang, he would 
probably now be making shoes in a factory in- 
stead of in Sing Sing. There is much plain com- 
mon sense in both these views of education. But 
there is more of plain folk-mysticism. 

Both speakers think of themselves as having 
had to struggle along in the ordinary natural way, 
in the one case by day-labour and in the other by 
petty larceny; and they contrast their lot with that 
of the fortunate ones who by means of an esoteric 
kind of knowledge have found an easy way of life. 
This knowledege, they believe, is reposed exclu- 
sively in certain difficult and officially designated 
books, which can be made to yield their secrets 
only through a process called going-to-school, and 
by the aid of a kind of public functionary called 
a teacher. 

This mysterious and beneficent procedure is the 
popular conception of education. The school 
building and the teacher are the later and more 
external elements of the cult. It is at heart a be- 
lief in the magic — one might call it the black- 
and-white magic — of books. 

[48] 



The Magic Theory of Education 

Now the essence of the belief In magic is the 
wish of the weak person to be strong — magic 
being the short straight line in the wish-world 
from weakness to strength. 

Think for a moment of some childhood fairy 
tale. The Hero is not the strong man. It is 
the wicked Giant who is strong. The role of 
brute force is always played by malevolent pow- 
ers. The Hero, stripped of his magical appurte- 
nances, is not much to look at. Almost invariably 
he is the youngest of the family, and is often repre- 
sented as diminutive in size or stature. And the 
older the fairy tale, the more physically insignifi- 
cant he is. It is only later, when the motif of 
romantic love enters into folk-fiction, that the hero 
must be tall and handsome. At the earlier period 
he is frankly a weakling, as Man in primitive times 
no doubt felt himself to be, in comparison with 
the mastodon and the aurochs; and frequently he 
IS regarded at the outset by the rest of the family 
with contempt, as no doubt was Man by the other 
animals when his great Adventure began. Like 
Man, the fairy-tale hero is confronted with an 
impossible task — sometimes by a whole series 
of such tasks, which he must somehow perform 
successfully if he wishes to survive; and, by no 
superior strength, but by some blessed help from 

[49] 



Were You Ever a Child? 

outside, a singing bush, a talking bird, by the aid 
of some supernatural weapon, and, above all, by 
the use of some talismanic Word, he achieves his 
exploits. Thus does the weakling, the youngest 
child, the harassed prey of hateful powers, be- 
come the Giant-Killer, the Dragon-Slayer, the 
Conquering Hero ! 

It is very human, this pathetic assertion that 
weakness must turn into strength. And, if It had 
not been for such a confidence, primitive Man 
might very well have given up the game, sur- 
rendered the field to his contemporaries of the 
animal kingdom. And this confidence might, 
somewhat fancifully, be described as a prevision- 
ary sense in early Man of the larger destinies of 
his race. In very truth, the weakness from which 
it sprang was the thing which made possible these 
larger destinies. For the unlimited adaptations 
of mankind are due precisely to his weakness. 
It is becau'se Man lacked the horns of the bull and 
the teeth of the tiger that he was forced to invent 
the club, the spear, the sword, the bow-and-arrow; 
It was because he lacked the fleetness of the deer 
that he had to tame and teach the horse to carry 
him; because he felt himself to be intolerably In- 
ferior to bird and fish that he could not rest con- 
tent until he had Invented the airplane and the sub- 

[50] 



I 



The Magic Theory of Education 

marine. In short, because he was the weakest of 
all the creatures on earth, he had to take refuge 
from the terrible truth in a childish but dynamic 
wish-dream of becoming — by some mysterious 
help from outside — the lord of creation. 

Fairy lore may be read as a record of the an- 
cient awe and gratitude of mankind to the miracles 
of human adaptation which served that childish 
wish. The all-powerful fairy wand is simply that 
unnatural and hence supernatural thing, the stick, 
broken from a magically helping tree and made 
to serve a human purpose; the sceptre of royalty 
is that same magic stick preserved to us in the 
lingering fairy-tale of monarchy. But more po- 
tent even than the magic of wand or sword in fairy 
lore is the magic of words. And truly enough it 
was the miracle of language which made the weak- 
est creature on earth the strongest. Writing, 
that mysterious silent speech, holding in leash the 
unknown powers of the magic word until it met 
the initiate eye, must have had for mankind a 
special awe and fascination, a quality of ultimate 
beauty and terror . . . 

This flavour of magical potency still clings to 
the Book. It is the greatest of the mysterious 
helps by which Man makes his dream of power 
come true. Who can blame the poor jailbird 

[51] 



k 



Were You Ever a Child? 

who thinks that there was, in the dull, incompetent 
pages of the text-books which you and I carried 
so unwillingly to school, an Open Sesame to a 
realm of achievement beyond his unaided power 
to reach! And who can blame the poor immi- 
grant parent if he regards the officially designated 
Books which his children bring home from school 
as a talisman against those harsh evils of the 
world which he in his ignorance has had to suffer ! 
But the magic theory is not the only popular 
superstition about education. There is another, 
even more deeply and stubbornly rooted in the 
human mind. 



[52] 



VL The Caste System of 
Education 

Now what has Caste to do with Educa- 
tion? Quite as much as Magic. You 
shall see. 

From the point of view of the student of edu- 
cation, the Caste system appears as a method of 
simplifying the hereditary transmission of knowl- 
edge — in short, as a primitive method of edu- 
cation. This will be the more readily apparent 
if we glance for a moment at its prehistoric ori- 
gins. 

Before man was man, he was an animal. He 
relied, like the rest of the animals, on a psychically 
easy — and lazy — mode of adaptation to reality. 
He had a specific set of *' instinctive " reactions to 
familiar stimuli. Doubt had not entered his soul. 
He had no conflicting impulses to torment him. 
His bag of instinctive animal tricks suflUced. 

But something happened to mar the easy per- 
fection of his state. Some change in environ- 

[53] 



Were You Ever a Child ^ 

mental conditions, perhaps, made his set of definite 
reactions inadequate. For the first time he didn't 
know exactly how to meet the situation. Con- 
flicting impulses shook his mind; doubt entered 
his soul — and Thought was born. Man thought 
because he had to think. But he hated to, be- 
cause it was the hardest thing he had ever done! 
He learned — unwillingly — more and more about 
how to live; he increased the number and the com- 
plexity of his adaptations; but he sought always 
to codify these adaptations into something re- 
sembling the bag of tricks which he had had to 
leave behind. And when it came to passing on 
the knowledge of these new adaptations to the 
younger generation — when it came, in short, to 
education — he did the job in as easy a way as he 
consicentiously could. 

You have seen a cat teaching her kittens how 
to catch mice, or a pair of birds teaching their 
young ones to fly. It is so simple I The thing to 
be learned is easy — easy, because the cat Is 
formed to catch mice and the bird to fly. And, 
once mastered, these tricks and a few others as 
simple constitute the sum of animal education. 
There is no more to learn; these equip the animal 
to deal successfully with reality. How a human 
parent must envy Tabby the simplicity and cer- 

[54] 



The Caste System of Education 

tainty of her task! She has only to go on the 
theory that a cat is an animal which lives by catch- 
ing mice in order to fulfil her whole educational 
duty. And human parents did desire (as indeed, 
consciously or unconsciously, they do yet) such a 
simplification of their task. Primitive mankind 
wanted to pass on to the new generation a simple 
bag of tricks. Of course, there is no specific bag 
of tricks which suffices Man to live by; he is what 
he is precisely by virtue of a capacity for unlim- 
ited adaptation to environment. If the bag of 
monkey-tricks had sufficed, about all we know now 
would be how to climb trees and pick cocoanuts. 
Our ancestors learned because they must; and they 
passed on what they had learned to their succes- 
sors — but in a form dictated by their wish to 
keep human behaviour as near as possible to the 
simple and easy character of animal life. They 
put on the brakes. 

Because mankind already knew more than it 
thought one animal species ought to have to know, 
it started to divide itself into sub-species. The 
division into the male and female sub-species came 
first — and has lasted longest. The young men 
were educated for war and the chase, and the 
young women for domestic duties. And this is 
essentially a division not of physical but rather of 

[55] 



Were You Ever a Child ^ 
intellectual labour. It was a separation of the 
burden of knowing how to behave in life's emer- 
gencies — a separation which by its simplicity gave 
such satisfaction to the primitive mind that he 
hated and feared any disturbance of it. 

To this day a man is not so much ashamed of 
doing *' woman's work " as of seeming to know 
how to do it. It is no disgrace for a man to sew 
on a button — provided he does it clumsily; and 
the laugh with which men and women greet each 
other's awkward intrusions into each other's 
*' spheres of effort " is a reassurance to the effect 
that the real taboo against knowing how has not 
been violated. It is for this reason that women 
had so much harder a time to fight their way into 
the '^ masculine " professions to which a prelimi- 
nary education was necessary than to enter the 
factories, where only strength was supposed to be 
required; and why (aside from the economic rea- 
sons) they have so much difficulty in entering 
trades which must be learned by apprenticeship. 
An interesting echo of this primitive taboo is to 
be found in New York City, where a telephone 
girl who wants to study the science which under- 
lies her labours would find in certain public schools 
that the electricity classes are for hoys exclusively. 

The other social and economic groups into 



The Caste System of Education 
which mankind divided itself tended to perpetuate 
themselves as simulated sub-species by the trans- 
mission of special knowledge along strict heredi- 
tary lines. Crafts of every sort — whether 
metal-working or magic, architecture or agricul- 
ture, seafaring or sheep-breeding, even poetry and 
prostitution — came more and more to be inher- 
ited, until among some of the great ancient peo- 
ples the caste system became the foundation of 
society. 

Ultimately the caste system per se was shat- 
tered by the demand of the process which we call 
civilization for a more variously adaptable crea- 
ture — for human beings. But it survives almost 
intact in certain class educational institutions, such 
as the finishing schools for girls — institutions de- 
voted to teaching the particular bag of tricks 
which will enable those who learn them to occupy 
successfully and without further adaptation a 
hereditary (or quasi-hereditary) position in so- 
ciety — to be a '^finished" and perfect member 
of a definite and unchanging human sub-species. 

The most potent harm which the caste theory 
of education has effected, however, is in its stulti- 
fication of the true magic of the written word. 
Let us see how that came about. 

[57] 



VII. The Canonization of 
Book-Magic 

IT was inewtable that the particular kind of 
knowledge which is represented by books 
should become the property of a certain 
caste; and it was inevitable that this caste should 
confine the hereditary transmission of that knowl- 
edge chiefly to such works as had been transmit- 
ted from the previous generation. 

Fortunately, the literate caste could not extin- 
guish literature. For the presumptively less sac- 
red writings which had been denied entrance to 
the canon because they were new were, so to speak, 
allowed to lie around loose where everybody 
could get at them. Thus the true magic of book- 
knowledge was released from the boundaries of 
caste, and became more and more a universal prop- 
erty. 

But nobody had any great respect for this grow- 
ing body of '' profane " literature. Popular awe 

[58] 



The Canonization of Book-Magic 
was reserved for the body of sacred literature in 
the possession of the specifically literate caste. 
Frequently the distinction was marked by a de- 
liberate difference in the languages or characters 
in which the two kinds of literature were written 
— sacred literature being written in the older, 
hieratic writing which nobody not of the literate 
caste could read. 

Note the result at this stage of the process: 
it is precisely those books which are, on the whole, 
least likely to be of present value to mankind, 
which are regarded with superstitious reverence. 
The most striking example is found in pre-revolu- 
tionary China, where the relics of an age utterly 
out of touch with the newer achievements in hu- 
man adaptation were learned by heart in the 
schools and made the basis of civil-service exam- 
inations. 

At this point of our ideal but not at all fanci- 
ful sketch, a new factor enters — class jealousy. 
The literate caste is found to be associated and 
partly identified with the leisure class. Sacred 
literature has become leisure class literature, and 
the aspirations of the less fortunate classes to- 
ward leisure class prerogatives include a special 
desire, tinged with the old superstitious reverence, 
for the forbidden books. These were more or 

[59] 



Were You Ever a Child? 
less unconsciously supposed to be, if not actually 
responsible for, at least bound up with, leisure 
class power. And finally the great democratizing 
movements in which some enterprising lower class 
wrests from some moribund leisure class its pos- 
sessions, seizes triumphant hold on its '' classics " 
and makes them a general possession. 

This sketch is so pieced together from all times 
and places that it may decidedly seem to need the 
reinforcement of evidence. Let us therefore 
call to the stand that young man over there who 
looks like an Intelligent Young Immigrant. He 
comes unabashed, and we proceed to question 
him: 

Q. Do you buy books? 

A. Yes, of course. 

Q. Admirable! You need a new pair of 
shoes, and yet you buy books ! Well, what books 
do you buy? 

A. Havelock Ellis, Edward Carpenter, Zola, 
Nietzsche — 

Q. See here, you must be a Socialist! 

A. Yes. What of it? 

Q. What of "it! Why, Tm talking about 
Reverence, and you haven't got any. You're not 
looking for the noblest utterances of mankind, 
you're looking for weapons with which to cut 

[60] 



1 



1 



The Canonization of Book-Magic 

your way through the jungle of contemporary 
hypocrisies ! 

A. Of course. 

Q. Well, how do you expect me to prove my 
theory by you? You are excused! 

We'll have to try again. There's another one. 
Eager Young Immigrant, thirsting for the treas- 
ures locked in our English tongue. Come here, 
my lad. 

Q. What books do you read? Shaw and 
Veblen, by any chance ? 

A. No, sir. I'm going to the English Litera- 
ture class at the social settlement, and I'm reading 
the '' Idylls of the King." I've read Addison's 
Essays and Shakespeare, and I'm going to take 
up the Iliad. 

Q. The classics, eh? 

A. Yes, sir. All the things they study at col- 
lege! 

Q. H'm. Ever hear of Dr. Eliot's Five- 
Foot Shelf? 

A. Yes, sir — I own it. 

Q. How much do you make a week? 

A. Eighteen dollars. 

Q. Thank you. That's all 1 

And there you are ! 

But please don't misunderstand me. Dispar- 
[6i] 



Were You Ever a Child ^ 
agement of the classics as such is far from being 
the point of my remarks ! One may regard the 
piano as a noble instrument, and yet point out 
the unprecedented sale of pianos during the war 
as an example of the influence of class jealousy in 
interior decoration. For observe that it is not 
the intrinsic merit of book or piano which wins the 
regard of the class long envious of its '* betters '' 
and now able by a stroke of luck to parade its 
class paraphernalia; it is the stamp of caste that 
makes it desirable: an accordion, which merely 
makes music, would not serve the purpose ! That 
boy who owns Dr. Eliot's Five-Foot Shelf does 
not want mere vulgar enlightenment; he wants an 
acquaintance with such books as have an aura of 
hereditary academic approval. 

And it is for the same reason that Latin and 
Greek have so apparently fixed a place in our pub- 
lic education. They were part of the system of 
educating gentlemen's sons in England; and what 
was good enough to be threshed into the hides of 
gentlemen's sons is good enough for us I 



[62] 



VIII. The Conquest of Cul- 
ture in America 

THE first organized schools in America 
were theological seminaries. This was 
due to the fact that the New England 
colonies were theocracies, church-states. No one 
not a member of the church had any political 
rights. And the heads of the church were the 
heads of the state. In this special kind of class 
government it naturally followed that theology 
was the prime study of ambitious youth. But as 
the colonies grew more prosperous and the rule 
of the more godly became as a matter of fact the 
rule of the more rich, the theological seminaries 
of New England changed by degrees into more 
easily recognizable imitations of the great gentle- 
men's sons' schools in old England. Such, in 
particular, was the theo-aristocratic genesis of 
Harvard and Yale. 

The gentlemen's sons' school was thus our first, 
and for a long time our only, educational achieve- 
ment. The humble theocratic beginnings of these 

[63] 



Were You Ever a Child? 

institutions did indeed leave a quasi-democratic 
tradition which made it possible for not only the 
sons of the well-to-do, but for the ambitious son 
of poor parents, to secure the knowledge of Latin 
and Greek necessary to fit them to exploit and rule 
a virgin continent. But beneath this cultural per- 
fection, to meet the needs of the great mass of the 
people, there was no organized or public education 
whatever/ The result was a vast illiteracy such 
as still exists in many parts of the South today. 
The private and pitiful efforts of the lower classes 
to secure an education took the form of paying 
some old woman to teach their children *' the three 
R's." 

Of these three R's the last has a significance of 
Its own. It is there by virtue of a realistic con- 
viction, born of harsh experience. A man may 
not be able to ^' figure," and yet know that he is 
being cheated. And so far as getting along In a 
buying-and-selling age is concerned, 'Rithmetic 
has an importance even more fundamental than 
Readin' and 'Ritin'. Yet in the list It stands mod- 
estly last — for it is a late and vulgar Intruder 
into sacred company. Even In a young commer- 
cial nation, the old belief In the rescuing magic of 
the Word still holds its place In the aspiring mind. 

1 Except in Dutch New York, and in Massachusetts. 

[64] 



The Conquest of Culture in America 

But why, you ask, quarrel with this wholesome 
reverence for books ? Well — suppose the work- 
ing class acquired such a reverence for books that 
it refused to believe it was being Educated unless 
it was being taught something out of a book! 
Suppose it worshipped books so much that when 
you offered its children flowers and stars and ma- 
chinery and carpenters' tools and a cook-stove to 
play with in order to learn how to live — suppose 
it eyed you darkly and said: ** Now, what are 
you trying to put over on me? " But that is to 
anticipate. 

It was due to the organized effort of the work- 
ing class that public education was at last pro- 
vided for American children. Our free public 
school system came into existence in the thirties 
as a result of trade union agitation.^ Its coming 

1 " The one dominant feature of this labour movement [1824- 
1836] was the almost fanatical insistence upon the paramount 
importance of education. In political platforms, in resolutions 
of public meetings, and in the labour press, the statement is re- 
peated over and over, that the fundamental demand of labour is 
for an adequate system of education. . . . 

*' To this movement, more than to any other single cause, if 
not more than to all other causes combined, is due the common 
school system of the United States. . . . When the movement 
died out in 1835 to 1837 . . . Horace Mann was leading the 
* educational revival,* and the common school was an estab- 
lished institution in nearly every state." — A. M. Simons: 
'' Social Forces in American History." 

[65] 



Were You Ever a Child? 

into existence is a great good upon which we need 
not dwell. But its subsequent history needs to be 
somewhat elucidated. 

The public school system was founded firmly 
upon the three R's. But these were plainly not 
enough. It had to be enlarged to meet our needs 
— and to satisfy our genuine democratic pride in 
it. So wings were thrown out into the fields of 
history and geography. And then? There was 
still an earth-full of room for expansion. But no, 
it was builded up — Up! And why? The 
metaphor is a little troublesome, but you are to 
conceive, pinnacled dim in the intense inane, or 
suspended from heaven itself, the gentlemen's 
sons' school. And this was what our public school 
system was striving to make connections with. 
And lo! at last it succeeded! The structure be- 
neath was rickety — fantastic — jerry-built — 
everything sacrificed to the purpose of providing 
a way to climb Up There; but the purpose was 
fulfilled. 

The democratic enthusiasm which created the 
public school had in fact been unaccompanied by 
any far-seeing theory of what education ought to 
be. And so that splendid enthusiasm, after its 
initial conquest of the three R's, proceeded to a 
conquest of Greek and Latin and the whole tra- 

[66] 



i 

I 



The Conquest of Culture in America 

ditional paraphernalia of aristocratic education. 
Every other purpose of public education was, for 
the time being lost sight of, forgotten, ignored, in 
the proud attempt to create a series of stairs which 
led straight up to the colleges. The high school 
became a preparatory school for college, and the 
courses were arranged, rearranged and deranged, 
with that intent. Final examinations were sys- 
tematized, supervised and regulated to secure the 
proper penultimate degree of academic achieve- 
ment — as for instance by the famous Regents' 
examinations. The public school lost its inde- 
pendence — which was worth nothing; and its op- 
portunity — which was worth everything. It re- 
mains a monument to the caste ideal of education. 
For the theory which underlay the scheme was 
that every American boy and girl who wanted an 
education should have the whole thing in bang-up 
style. What was good enough for gentlemen's 
sons was none too good for us. That there might 
be no mistake about it, the states erected their own 
colleges, with plenty of free scholarships to rob 
ignorance of its last excuse. These state colleges, 
while furnished with various realistic and technical 
adjuncts, and lacking in the authentic hereditary 
aura of their great Eastern predecessors, were 
still echoes, sometimes spirited and more often 

[67] 



Were You Ever a Child? 

forlorn, of the aristocratic tradition of centuries 
agone. With the reluctant addition of a kindly 
scheme for keeping very young children in school, 
the system now stretched from infancy to full 
manhood, and embraced — in theory — the 
whole educable population of the United States. 

In its utter thoroughness of beneficent inten- 
tion, the system was truly sublime. 

The only trouble was that it didn't work. 



[68] 



i 



IX. Smith, Jones and Robin- 
son 

AT this point there seems to be an interrup- 
tion from somebody at the back of the 
hall. — Louder, please ! What's that you 
say? 

** I thought," says the voice, *' that this was to 
be a discussion of education. It sounds to me 
more like a monologue. When do we get a 
chance to talk? " 

Oh, very well! If you think you can do this 
thing better than I can, go ahead. Suppose you 
tell us why the American public school system 
failed to work! — One at a time, please. Mr. 
— er — Smith has the floor. He will be followed 
in due order by Mr. Jones and Mr. Robinson. 
And then I hope everybody will be satisfied. Yes, 
Mr. Smith? 

Mr. Smith : ** I am one of the so-called vic- 
tims of our American public school system. I 
went to grammar school, to high school, and then 

[69] 



Were You Ever a Child ^ 

to college. You say that is what the system is 
for — to lead up to college. Well, it worked in 
my case. My parents were poor, but I studied 
hard and got a free scholarship, and I worked my 
way through college by tending furnaces in the 
morning and tutoring at night. You say college 
is designed to impart a gentleman's sons' educa- 
tion. Well, I got that kind of education. And 
what I want to know is, what's wrong with me? 
I can't say I feel particularly stultified by my edu- 
cational career! " 

No, no, Mr. Smith, don't stop. Go right on! 

Mr. Smith (continuing) : '' I will admit that 
I have sometimes wished I had taken some kind 
of technical course instead of the straight classical. 
But I didn't want to be an engineer or chemist, so 
why should I ? In fact I didn't know exactly what 
I wanted to be. ... I suppose my education 
might not unreasonably have been expected to 
help me understand myself better. And I con- 
fess that when I came out into the world with 
my A.B. I did feel a bit helpless. But I managed 
to find a place for myself, and I get along very 
well. I can't say that I make any definite use of 
my college eduction, but I rather think it's been 
an advantage." 

Thank you for being so explicit. Mr. Jones 

[70] 



Smith, Jones and Robinson 

next. Mr. Jones, you have just heard Mr. 
Smith's splendid testimonial to the value of a col- 
lege education — how it has unlocked for him 
the ages' accumulated wealth of literature, of 
science, of art — how it has put him in vivid touch 
with the world in which he lives — how it has 
made him realize his own powers, and given him 
a serene confidence in his ability to use them wisely 
— how fully it has equipped him to live in this 
complex and difficult age — in a word, how it has 
helped him to become all that a twentieth century 
American citizen should be! Have you, Mr. 
Jones, anything to add to his account of these 
benefits? 

Mr. Jones: '' Your coarse sarcasm, if aimed 
at me, is misdirected. I never went to college. 
I didn't want to tend furnaces, so when I finished 
high school I got a job. But there's something 
to this gentleman's sons' stuff. I had four years' 
start of Smith, but I feel that he's got a certain 
advantage over me just because he is a college 
man. Now why rs that, I'd like to know? I 
could have gone to college too, if I had cared 
enough about it. But studying didn't interest me. 
I was bored with high school." 

Exactly, Mr. Jo^nes. And some hundreds of 
thousands of others were also so bored with high 

[71] 



Were You Ever a Child? 

school that even the prestige which a college edu- 
cation confers, could not tempt them to further 
meaningless efforts. You have explained a large 
part of the breakdown of our public school sys- 
tem. In theory — but Mr. Robinson wishes to 
speak. 

Mr. Robinson : ** Theory — theory — the- 
ory ! I think it's about time a few facts were in- 
jected into this alleged discussion ! The fact I'm 
interested in is just this: I quit school when I 
was twelve years old. I had just finished gram- 
mar school. I couldn't go to high school. I had 
to go to work. What have your theories of edu- 
cation got to do with me? " 

Everything, Mr. Robinson! You smashed one 
theory to pieces, you were about to be condemned 
to a peculiar kind of slavery by another theory, 
and you were rescued after a fashion by a third 
theory. You are, to begin with, the rock upon 
which the good ship Education foundered. As 
I was about to say when I was interrupted: the 
grandiose ideal of a gentleman's sons' education 
for every American boy failed — because there 
were some millions of American boys like you 
who could not go to college, and some hundreds of 
thousands of others like Mr. Jones here, who 
would not — who did not feel that it was worth 

[72] 



Smith, Jones and Robinson 

the necessary effort And these vast hordes of 
you going out Into the world at the age of twelve 
to sixteen with only the precarious beginning of a 
leisure class culture, became the educational prob- 
lem which the last generation has been trying to 
solve. 



[73] 



X. Employer vs. Trade 
Unionist 

IT was the American Business Man who pro- 
posed the first "practical'' reform; and if 
you have any doubt of the validity of the 
Caste theory, note what happened. The Ameri- 
can Business Man knew that these millions of 
youths were going to enter his shops and factories; 
they were not going to be members of a leisure 
class, they were going to be wage-slaves; and so he 
proposed to educate them to be efficient wage- 
slaves. 

And he might have succeeded in imposing his 
capitalistic version of the Caste theory of educa- 
tion upon our public schools, had it not been for 
the trade unions, who perceived in these capitalist 
plans a means of breaking down their own appren- 
tice system. " What! turn the schools into train- 
ing-schools for strikebreakers? No! " they said 
— and they bitterly opposed every attempt to in- 
troduce industrial training into the schools, and 

[74] 



Employer vs. Trade Unionist 

mustered to their aid the old notions of the Magic 
of Books. *^ Let the children have an education " 
— meaning book-learning; ** it will be time 
enough for them to learn to work when they leave 
school/' was the general verdict. And so in this 
clash of economic interests, one theory warred 
with another, and the theory of Education as a 
mysterious communion with the Magic of Books 
happily won. 

Happily — for though the controversy had its 
unfortunate results, in the fixing of a prejudice in 
the minds of the working people against industrial 
education, we should not fail to realize that in that 
controversy the trade unions were right. We do 
not want to educate the children of the poor in 
this twentieth century to be a human sub-species; 
it would be better to give them fragments of a 
leisure class education than fix them into the wage- 
slave mould; it would be better that they learned 
Greek and Latin (or, for that matter, Sanscrit!) 
than merely a trade. It would be better to turn 
them out as they came in, helpless and ignorant, 
than to make them into efficient machines. Hap- 
pily, such a choice is not necessary. It is possible 
to have an education which produces human be- 
ings who are neither out of touch with their age 
nor hopelessly confined within it — a generation 

[75] 



Employer vs. Trade Unionist 

which will be the masters and not the slaves of Its 
environment. 

The outlines of such an educational system were 
already being drawn, In theory and even experi- 
mentally In fact. But these radical proposals 
threatened to cost more money than governments 
are accustomed to expend on peaceful and con- 
structive enterprises. Yet something had to be 
done In response to a popular sense of the Imper- 
fections of our system. 

Something was done accordingly. 



( 



[76] . 

1 



I 



XL The Goose-Step 

BEAR in mind that the necessities of the 
case required something which would not 
cost any money, which would leave the sys- 
tem really intact, and yet which would impress be- 
holders with the fact of Progress. 

The device which answered to this description 
was copied from Prussia and informed with the 
essence of the Prussian spirit — a quasi-military 
Uniformity. There is nothing, indeed, so im- 
pressive to the observer as the sight of everybody 
doing exactly the same thing at the same time. 
And when that thing is totally unnecessary and 
very difficult, the effect is to stun the mind into a 
bewildered admiration. Hence the preposter- 
ously military aspect of the schools of yesterday 
— the marching in line out to recess and back 
again. Hence the drillmaster airs of the teach- 
ing force — as, for instance, the New York 
teacher who boasted, ^' I said to my pupils, ' All 
who live on Blank street raise their hands,' and 

[77] 



Were You Ever a Child? 

then I turned to talk to the superintendent, for- 
getting to say ^ Hands down ' — and five minutes 
later, when I looked around, those Blank street 
children still had their hands up. That's what 
I call discipline! '' And hence the reprimand to 
the other New York teacher because, when she 
came back from a visit to Italy, she told the 
geography class about her journey and passed 
around picture postcards, instead of hearing the 
children recite the appointed Lesson from the ap- 
pointed Book at the appointed Hour. Think how 
it sounds for a city superintendent to be able to 
pull out .his watch and say to a visitor: '^ At this 
moment every sixth grade pupil, in every school in 
the whole city, is opening his geography! " That 
is System, and it must not be deranged in order 
to interest a mere roomful of children in the 
realities of geography for half an hour! 

I experienced some of the benefits of the Goose- 
Step System myself, back in Illinois — and I 
know just how a child feels about it. He feels 
just as you would feel if at the conclusion of a 
theatrical performance you were commanded to 
** Rise! Turn! Pass! " He feels humiliated and 
ridiculous. He feels that he is being made a fool 
of. The Goose-Step System is not intended to 
make its little victims feel happy; it is only in- 

[78] 



The Goose-Step 

tended to impress beholders with the fact of 
Progress. 

And this kind of Systematization, this fake re- 
form, has been the only serious contribution to 
American educational practice in the public 
schools during the life of the generation to which 
you and I belong — until within the last few 
years. 

Fortunately, another crisis arose. In every 
large city the attendance at the public schools out- 
grew the school capacities, and it became neces- 
sary to put many children on a ^^ half-time '' 
basis. And this scandal demanded relief. It 
still demands relief. And at present we are faced 
with a choice between two methods of relief. 

One method is familiar — to turn the gram- 
mar schools into adjuncts of capitalist shops and 
factories. It is the system now approved by the 
educational authorities of most of the large cities, 
including New York. The other is a sane and 
democratic proposal for education on scientific 
principles, for the benefit of the child and of the 
race. 



[79] 



XII. The Gary Plan 

IT is in the nature of a happy incident that this 
second proposal is now actually a practical 
alternative to the capitalist scheme just de- 
scribed. For it is by virtue of its extrinsic and 
not its real merits that it has its chance today. 
It happened that a man named Wirt had solved 
in the schools of Gary, Indiana, the problem of 
accommodating two pupils with a desk built for 
one. He did this by the simple means of abolish- 
ing the private and exclusive character of the 
desks. By having one-half the pupils come a 
little later and leave a little later than the other 
half, and use the desks which the others had just 
vacated for the gymnasium or workshop or as- 
sembly room, it was found that there were desks 
enough for all. And because this plan made it 
unnecessary to spend some millions of dollars on 
new school-buildings, he was invited to come to 
New York and put his plan in practice here. 
If that had been all there was to the Gary sys- 

[80] 



The Gary Plan 

tern, it would have been adopted peacefully 
enough. But the Gary system was a real and 
hence a revolutionary kind of education, and so 
it met with immediate and bitter hostility. 

It made the child and his needs the center of 
the whole process of education. It undertook to 
give him a chance to learn how to live. It made 
the school to a large extent a replica of the world 
outside. It gave him machinery and gardens and 
printing presses to play with and learn from. 
And right there it aroused the suspicions of work- 
ing class parents, who were afraid their children 
were not going to get enough Book-learning. It 
demanded something of teachers besides routine 
and discipline and stoic patience; and though they 
came with experience to be its most enthusiastic 
advocates," they were in prospect roused to angry 
opposition. It abolished the semi-sacerdotal dig- 
nities of the school-building, and thus offended a 
deep-lying superstitious reverence in a public which 
regarded education as something set apart from 
life. It clashed with the bureaucratic fads of the 
higher educational authorities, and provoked them 
to financial sabotage. 

In brief, it made enemies. Most of these en- 
emies would in course of time have as inevitably 
become its friends, except for the mayoralty cam- 

[8i] 



Were You Ever a Child^ 

paign, and the necessity of finding some popular 
grounds for attacking the well-intentioned but un- 
popular administration then in power. In these 
circumstances the Gary plan was dragged into 
politics and lied about most egregiously. It was 
unfortunate that the Gary plan should ever have 
had to cast in its lot, even in appearance, with 
any party or administration. But the results have 
by no means been so disastrous as might have been 
feared. The Gary system, as a pet project of 
an administration of bureaucratic reform politi- 
cians, received a black eye. But the ideal of edu- 
cation which is implicit in the Gary plan has not 
been defeated. Mayor Hylan's rash pre-elec- 
tion promises to the contrary notwithstanding, the 
Gary plan is still alive and at work in New York 
City. Like Copernicus' theory that the earth re- 
volves around the sun, it has received only a tem- 
porary setback. Freed from political entangle- 
ments, the Gary plan is now gathering adherents 
where such a democratic plan must needs gather 
them — among the people, in growing bodies of 
enthusiasts organized as neighborhood sections of 
the Gary School Association. And these neigh- 
bourhood sections will be the nucleus of the resist- 
ance presently to be offered to the undemocratic 
capitalist plans for educational reform. 

[82] 



XIII. Learning to Work 

HERE, then, is the situation at is stands. 
Our education is out of relation to the 
time in which we live. It is breaking 
down under the pressure of economic forces which 
demands that it turn out people who do not have 
to be re-educated by modern industry. It cannot 
remain as it is. It will either be made the instru- 
ment of a democratic culture which accepts the 
present but foresees the future; or it will fall into 
the hands of those who are planning to make it 
a training school for wage-slaves. Here is the 
latter program, as described by the superinten- 
dent of schools in a great American city: 

^' Three years ago the elimination of pupils 
from the upper grades of our elementary schools 
and the demands of industry led us to experiment 
with industrial education in the grades. . . . 
Our controlling idea was that adolescent boys and 
girls standing on the threshold of industrial life 
should be grouped in prevocational schools in 

[83] 



Were You Ever a Child? 

which they would receive, in addition to instruc- 
tion in formal subjects, such instruction and train- 
ing in constructive activities as would develop 
aptitudes and abilities of distinct economic value. 
At present the opportunity to rotate term by term 
through various shops is afforded in seven schools 
to approximately 3,000 boys and girls in the 7th, 
8th and 9th years." 

Between these two programs you must choose. 
Either efficient democratic education, or efficient 
capitalistic education. 

*' But," asks some one, ^' what is there to choose 
between them? Democratic education and capi- 
talistic education both seem to me to consist in 
turning the school into a workshop." 

Not at all! The democratic plan is rather to 
turn the workshop into a school. That may seem 
like a large order, but I may as well confess to 
you at once that the democratic scheme proposes 
ultimately to bring the whole of industry within 
the scope of the educational system: nothing less! 
But the benevolent assimilation of industry by edu- 
cation in the interest of human progress and hap- 
piness, is one thing; and the swallowing of the 
public school system by industry in the interest 
of the employing class, is quite another. 

For the present, however, democratic education 

[84] 



Learning to Work 

merely brings the workshop into the school, so 
that the processes of industry may be the more 
readily mastered; while capitalist education merely 
sends the school-child into its workshops, in order 
that he may become more effectively exploitable. 
The difference should be sufficiently obvious : in 
the school-workshops of capitalism the child is 
taught how to work for somebody else, how to 
conduct mechanical operations in an industrial pro- 
cess over which he has no control; in the demo- 
cratic workshops of the school he learns to use 
those processes to serve his own creative 
wishes. In the one he is taught to be a wage-slave 
— and bear in mind that this refers to the chil- 
dren of the poor — for the rich have their own 
private schools for their own children. In the 
other, the child learns to be a free man. 

That is just what irritates the capitalist re- 
formers of our public school system. Since the 
children of the poor are going to be factory hands, 
what is the use of their having learned to be 
free men? They might as well have learned 
Greek and Latin, for all the use It is going to be 
to them! 

And that is why you must exercise your choice. 
The merits are not quite all on one side of the 
question. There are disadvantages in the demo- 

[85] 



Were You Ever a Child? 

cratic plan of education. These disadvantages 
have nowhere been made more clear than by H» G. 
Wells in his fantastic scientific parable, '' The 
First Men in the Moon.'' You will remember 
that his explorers visited the Moon In a queer 
sort of air-craft, and found there a people with 
institutions quite unlike our own. They too, 
however, had classes, and they had solved the 
problem of the education of these classes in a 
forthright manner which is utterly unlike our 
timid human compromises. One of the visitors 
from Earth thus describes the Lunar System: 

'^ In the Moon . . . every citizen knows his 
place. He is born to that place, and the elab- 
orate discipline of training and education and sur- 
gery he undergoes fits him at last so completely 
to it that he has neither ideas nor organs for any 
purpose beyond it. ^ Why should he?' Phi-oo 
would ask. If, for example, a Selenite is destined 
to be a mathematician, his teachers and trainers 
set out at once to that end. They check the in- 
cipient disposition to other pursuits, they encour- 
age his mathematical bias with a perfect physio- 
logical skill. His brain grows, or at least the 
mathematical faculties of his brain grow, and the 
rest of him only so much as is necessary to sustain 
this essential part of him. At last, save for rest 

[86] 



i 



Learning to Work 

and food, his one delight lies in the exercise and 
display of his faculty, his one interest in its appli- 
cation, his sole society with other specialists in his 
own line. His brain grows continually larger, at 
least so far as the portions engaging in mathe- 
matics are concerned; they bulge ever larger and 
seem to suck all life and vigour from the rest of 
his frame; his limbs shrivel, his heart and digestive 
organs diminish, his insect face is hidden under its 
bulging contours. His voice becomes a mere 
stridulation for the stating of formulae; he seems 
dead to all but properly enunciated problems. 
. . . And so he attains his end. . . . 

** The bulk of these insects, however, . . . are, 
I gather, of the operative [working] class. 
* Machine hands,' indeed, some of these are in 
actual nature — it is no figure of speech ; the single 
tentacle of the mooncalf-herdsman is profoundly 
modified for clawing, lifting, guiding, the rest of 
them no more than necessary subordinate append- 
ages to these important parts . . . others again 
have flat feet for treadles, with ankylosed joints; 
and others — who I have been told are glass- 
blowers — seem mere lung-bellows. But every 
one of these common Selenites I have seen at 
work is exquisitely adapted to the social need it 
meets. . . . 

[87] 



Were You Ever a Child? 

*' The making of these various sorts of opera- 
tives must be a very curious and interesting proc- 
ess. . . . Quite recently I came upon a number 
of young Selenites confined in jars from which 
only the fore limbs protruded, who were being 
compressed to become machine minders of a spe- 
cial sort. The extended * hand ' in this highly 
developed system of technical education is stimu- 
lated by irritants and nourished by injections, while 
the rest of the body is starved. Phi-oo, unless I 
misunderstood him, explained that in the earlier 
stages these queer little creatures are apt to dis- 
play signs of suffering in their various cramped 
situations, but they easily become indurated to 
their lot; and he took me on to where a number 
of flexible-limbed messengers were being drawn 
out and broken in. It is quite unreasonable, I 
know, but such glimpses of the educational meth- 
ods of these beings affect me disagreeably. I 
hope, however, that may pass off, and I may be 
able to see more of this aspect of their wonderful 
social order. That wretched looking hand-tenta- 
cle sticking out of its jar seemed to have a sort 
of limp appeal for lost possibilities; it haunts me 
still, although, of course, it is really in the end a 
far more humane proceeding than our earthly 

[88] 



Learning to Work 

method of leaving children to grow into human 
beings and then making machines of them." 

The Lunar system has indeed much to be said 
for it; and the capitalist plan of wage-slave edu- 
cation has at least the merit of being a definite step 
in that direction. 



[89] 



XIV. Learning to Play 

^^ I ^ UT in either case/' exclaims an indig- 

1^ nant mother, ** the child ceases to be a 

-■-^ child — under either the democratic or 
the capitalistic plan — '' 

No, madam! The object of a genuine demo- 
cratic education is to enable him to remain always 
a child. 

** Then,'' says another interlocutor, *^ I must 
have misunderstood you. I thought you con- 
ceived of education as growing-up!* 

Growing up, yes — out of the helplessness, the 
fear, the misery of childhood, which come only 
from weakness and ignorance: growing up into 
knowledge and power. 

** But putting aside forever his toys and games," 
protests the mother. *' Forgetting how to play ! " 

No, madam. Learning rather to take realities 
for his toys, and entering blithely into the fasci- 
nating and delightful game of life. Forget how to 
play? That is what he is condemned to now. It 

[90] 



Learning to Play 

is a pity. And that is precisely what we want to 
change. 

** By setting him to work? " 

What! are we to quibble over words? Tell 
me, then, what is the difference between work and 
play? 

Or rather, to shorten the argument, let me tell 
you. Play is effort which embodies one's own 
creative wishes, one's own dreams. Work Is any 
kind of effort which fails to embody such wishes 
and such dreams. . . . When you were first mar- 
ried, and began to keep house — under difficulties, 
it may be • — was that work or play, madam ? Do 
not be afraid of being sentimental — we are 
among friends. Is it not true that at first, while 
it was a part of the dream of companionship, while 
it seemed to you to be making that dream come 
true, it was play — no matter how much effort it 
took? And is it not true that when It came to 
seem to you merely something that had to be 
done, it was work, no matter how easily per- 
formed? — And you, my friend, who built a little 
house in the country with your own hands for 
pleasure, and worked far beyond union hours in 
doing it- — was not that play? 

It was your own house, you say. Just so; and 
it is the child's own house, that cave in the woods 

[91] 



Were You Ever a Child? 
which he toils so cheerfully to create. And it 
' was their own house, the cathedral which the arti- 
sans and craftsmen of the middle ages created so 
joyously — the realization of a collective wish to 
which the creative fancy of every worker might 
make its private contribution. 

You know, do you not, why we cannot build 
cathedrals now? Because craftsmen are no 
longer children at play — that is to say, no longer 
free men. They toil at something which is no 
affair of theirs, because they must. They have 
become the more or less unwilling slaves of a sys- 
tem of machine production, which they have not 
yet gained the knowledge and power to take and 
use to serve their own creative dreams. 

But men do not like to work; they like to play. 
They want to be the masters and not the slaves of 
the machine-system. That is why they have 
struggled so fiercely to climb out of the class of 
slaves into the class of masters; it has been that 
hope which has sustained them in what would 
otherwise have seemed an intolerable condition. 
And that is why, as such a hope goes glimmering, 
they join together to wrest from their employers 
some control over the conditions under which they 
work; and also why their employers so often pre- 
fer to lose money in strikes rather than concede 

[92] 



Learning to Play 

sueh control — for the sense of mastery is dearer 
even than profits. That is, incidentally, why so 
many workers prefer a white collar job to a de- 
cent union wage — because it permits them to 
fancy themselves a part of the master class. And 
finally, that is why the industrial system is now 
at the point of breakdown — because a class of 
workers who have no sense of mastery over their 
jobs cannot and will not take enough interest in 
their work to meet the new and stupendous de- 
mands upon production. When pressure is put 
upon them, they revolt — and hell is raised, but 
not the production-rate. 

Every production manager knows that even our 
most efficient industries are producing far less than 
their maximum ; and he knows why. The psychol- 
ogy of slavery does not make for efficiency. 
There was a time when inefficiency didn't matter 
— when infants in agony from lack of sleep and 
girls terrorized by brutal foremen could produce 
more than could be sold, and were preferable to 
workers who had to be bargained with. Capital- 
ism denied the worker the right to dare to think 
his job his own. But the wiseacres of capitalism 
now encourage the worker to believe his interests 
identical with those of his employer; they take 
out some of his wages and give it back to him in 

[93] 



Were You Ever a Child? 

a separate envelope and call it '^ profit-sharing." 
But the production manager knows that such a 
mess of doubtful pottage will scarcely take the 
place of their birthright. He knows that he has 
got out of the workers the utmost that their slave 
psychology will permit. He knows that there is 
no use to go on telling them that the business is 
their affair. He knows that the only thing left 
to be done is to make it their affair - — to put into 
their collective control not only wages and hours, 
but what they create and how they create it. The 
job must be theirs before they can put into it 
the energy of free men. Their creative wish 
alone can bring production to its maximum. But 
that is not what he is paid to do. He, too, is 
denied the right to shape industry to his dream; 
he may not make it efficient; he must try to make 
it more profitable. He, too, is a slave ... a 
slave who wishes his master would set him free 
to play for a while with this great beautiful toy. 
He would show us how to increase production by 
100 per cent on four hours work a day. He 
would show us how work could be made a joy to 
everybody. He would — but what is the use? 
He sits and looks out the window and wishes that 
something would happen. Perhaps these young 
men and women who have learned to play with 

[94] 



Learning to Play 

machinery, who know It as a splendid toy and not 
as a hateful tyrant, who want to use it to make 
themselves and the world happier — perhaps a 
generation of such workers, the products of a 
democratic and efficient educational system, will 
have the knowledge and the power to take and 
use this machinery to serve their own creative 
dream of a useful and happy new society. . . . 
Madam, have I answered your question? 



[95] 



XV. First and Last Things 

^^ I ^ UT IS there nothing in the world of any 
1^ importance except machinery? " 
-^^^ Thank you for reminding me ! We 
are all inclined to be too much preoccupied with 
the importance of machinery. I confess that I 
have been so ever since, as a child, I took my 
father's watch apart and found myself unable to 
cope with the problem of putting it back together 
again. But note for a moment the pragmatic sig- 
nificance of such an infantile predicament. Of 
what use would it have been for some infinitely 
wise person to say to me: '^ Child, do not attach 
so much importance to those wheels and springs! 
They are interesting, in a way; but how much less 
interesting than the birds, the flowers and the 
stars ! '' — what good, I ask you, would such coun- 
sel have been to me at that moment? I wanted 
to get that watch put back together before some- 
thing terrible happened to me. And mankind as 
a whole seems to me to be in much the same situ- 

[96] 



i 



First and Last Things 

ation. For the best of reasons, it has to master 
the problem presented by a machine civilization 
— lest something terrible happen. Its preoccu- 
pation is born of fear. The flowers and stars (it 
thinks) can wait: they are not so dangerous. 

And yet the infinitely wise person would have 
been right. Machinery must be ranked among 
(so to speak) the minor poetry of the universe. 
The astronomic epic, the botanical lyric, the bio- 
logical drama, are, from any point of view not 
prejudiced by our fears, more important. It is 
only because we are so acutely conscious, all of us, 
of the failure of our educational system in the 
matter of preparing us to exist unbewilderedly in 
the midst of a machine civilization, that I have put 
such emphasis on the adequacy of the new educa- 
tion in dealing with that problem. It is of im- 
portance only as food is important to a starving 
man — merely so. And if you have heard enough 
about the place of machinery in education — 

I see that you have. Very well, then we will 
go on to the matters of real importance. 

What are they? 

(My rhetorical questions, it seems, are always 
being taken literally! I was about to tell you 
myself, but I suppose we shall have to listen to 
that elderly gentleman over there, who evidently 

[97] 



Were You Ever a Child^ 

has the answer ready.) Very well, sir. What 
are they ? 

'* I am glad to hear that you have disposed at 
last of the crassly materialistic aspect of your 
theme, and are about to deal with its spiritual as- 
pects. For these are naturally its more important 
aspects. And if you ask me to specify more par- 
ticularly what these are, I can only reply in old- 
fashioned language, and say that the important 
things in life, and hence in education, are Beauty, 
Truth and Goodness. I trust that you agree with 
me?" 

Certainly, sir. Beauty and Truth and Good- 
ness — or, if you will permit me to translate these 
eighteenth century abstractions into our contem- 
porary terminology - — the cultivation of the cre- 
ative faculties, of disinterested curiosity, and of 
personal relationships, undoubtedly constitute the 
chief ends of democratic cultural endeavor. 
These, indeed, together with what you would call 
Usefulness and what we would call technical ef- 
ficiency, comprise pretty much of the whole of ex- 
istence. Not all of it — but quite enough to take 
as the subject of our new inquiry. 

How can education encourage and develop, not 
in a few individuals, but in the masses of the peo- 
ple, the creative faculties which are the source 

[98] 



First and Last Things 

of beauty? — for it must conceive its task in these 
broad terms if it is to be a democratic education. 
How can it foster in these same masses that rare 
growth, disinterested curiosity, from which come 
the fruits of philosophy and science? And how 
can education deal effectively with the dangerous 
emotions of personal relationship? 

The task seems at first glance so difficult that 
it will be well for us to ask at the outset whether 
it can be accomplished at all I 



[99] 



XVI. The Child as Artist 

IN this matter, most decidedly, we need expert 
advice. Let us start with Beauty. The one 
who best understands Beauty is undoubtedly 
the Artist. Let us call in the Artist. . . . Will 
you question him, or shall I? You prefer to do 
it yourself, I see. Very well, then — but please 
try to get to the point as soon as possible! 

The Questioner. What we want to know is 
this : is it possible to teach the child to become an 
artist? 

The Artist. He is an artist already. 

The Questioner. What do you mean! 

The Artist. Just what I say. The child is 
an artist; and that artist is always a child. The 
greatest periods of art have always been those in 
which artists had the direct, naive, unspoiled 
vision of the child. The aim of our best artists 
today is to recover that vision. They are trying 
to see the world as children see it, and to record 
their vision of it as a child would do. Have you 

[lOO] 



The Child as Artist 

ever looked at children's drawings - — not the sort 
of things they are taught to do by mistaken and 
mischievous adults, but the pictures that are the 
natural expressions of their creative impulses? 
And haven't you observed that modern paintings 
are coming to be more and more like such pic- 
tures ? 

The Questioner. Well — er, yes, I had no- 
ticed something of the kind ! But is that sort of 
thing necessarily art? I mean — well, I don't 
want to attempt to argue with you on a subject 
in which you are an expert, but — 

The Artist. Oh, that's all right ! The mod- 
ern artist Is ready to discuss art with anybody — 
the more ignorant of the subject, the better 1 
You see, we want art to cease to be the possession 
of a caste — we want it to belong to everybody. 
As a member of the human race, your opinions are 
important to us. 

The Questioner. That is very kind of you. 
I fear it is rather in the nature of a digression, 
but, since I may ask without fear of seeming pre- 
sumptuous, — are those horrid misshapen green 
nudes of Matisse, and those cubical blocks of paint 
by I-forget-his-name, and all that sort of thing — 
are they your notion of what art should be? 

The Artist. Mine? Oh, not at all! They 

[lOl] 



Were You Ever a Child? 

are merely two out of a thousand contemporary at- 
tempts to recover the naive childlike vision of 
which I spoke. If you will compare them with a 
child's drawing, or with a picture by a Navajo In- 
dian, or with the sketch of an aurochs traced on 
the wall of his cave by one of our remote ances- 
tors, you will note an essential difference. Those 
artists were not trying to be naive and childlike; 
they were naive and childlike. The chief merit 
of our modern efforts, in my personal opinion. Is 
in their quality as a challenge to traditional and 
mistaken notions of what art should be — an ad- 
vertisement, startling enough, and sometimes mali- 
ciously startling, of the artist's belief that he has 
the right to be first of all an artist. 

The Questioner. Now we are coming to 
the point. What is an artist? 

The Artist. I told you, a child. And by 
that, I mean one who plays with his materials — 
not one who performs a set and perhaps useful 
task with them. A creator -. — 

The Questioner. But a creator of what? 
Not of Beauty, by any chance? 

The Artist. Incidentally of Beauty. 

The Questioner. There we seem to dis- 
agree. If those horrid pictures — 

[102] 



The Child as Artist 

The Artist. Suppose you tell me what 
Beauty is. 

The Questioner. It seems to me quite sim- 
ple. Beauty is — well — a thing is either beau- 
tiful, or it isn't. And — 

The Artist. Just so ; the only trouble is that 
so few of us are able to agree whether it is or 
isn't. You yourself have doubtless changed your 
opinions about what is beautiful many times in the 
course of your career as an art-lover; and the 
time may come when you will cherish some horrid 
nude of Matisse's as your dearest possession. 
Let us admit, like the wise old poet, that Beauty is 
not a thing which can be argued about. It can 
only be produced. 

The Questioner. But if we don't know what 
Beauty is, how can we produce it? 

The Artist. I have already told you — as 
the incidental result of creative effort. 

The Questioner. Effort to create what? 

The Artist. Oh, anything. 

The Questioner. Are you joking? 

The Artist. I never was more serious in my 
life. And I should really inform you that I am 
merely repeating the familiar commonplaces of 
modern esthetics. Beauty is the incidental result 
of the effort to create a house, a sword, — 

[103] 



Were You Ever a Child? 

The Questioner. Or a shoe? 

The Artist. Yes. I have some peasant 
shoes from Russia which are very beautiful. You 
can see shoes which are v/orks of art in any good 
museum. 

The Questioner. But hardly in any boot- 
shop window ! 

The Artist. Those shoes were not created 
— they were done as a set task. They were not 
made by peasants or craftsmen for pleasure — 
they were made by wage-slaves who did them only 
because they must. Do not for a moment imag- 
ine that it is the difference in materials or shape 
that matters — it is the difference in the spirit with 
which they ar-e made. I have seen modern shoes 
which are works of art — because they were made 
by a bootmaker who is an artist and does what 
pleases himself. 

The Questioner. Do they please anybody 
else? 

The Artist. Eh? 

The Questioner. Would you be seen wear- 
ing them in the street? 

The Artist. Would I be seen drinking 
my coffee from a cup that had been turned on a 
wheel by a man who loved the feel of the clay 
under his fingers and who knew just the right 

[104] 



The Child as Artist 

touch to give the brhn? Was Richard Coeur du 
Lion's sword less a sword because it had been 
made by an artist who dreamed over the steel 
instead of by a tired man in a hurry? I cannot af- 
ford to wear shoes made by my bootmaker-artist 
friend- — but I wish I could, for they fit! 

The Questioner. Will you give me his ad- 
dress? — ■ I beg your pardon — Please go on. 

The Artist. I was about to say, you wrong 
the artist if you think that he is not interested in 
utihty. It is only because utility has become 
bound up with slavery that artists and people with 
artistic impulses revolt against it and in defiance 
produce utterly and fantastically useless things. 
This will be so, as long as being useful means be- 
ing a slave. But art is not an end in itself; it 
had its origin, and will find its destiny, in the 
production of useful things. For example — 

The Questioner. Yes, do let us get down to 
the concrete ! 

The Artist. Suppose you are out walking in 
a hilly country, and decide to whittle yourself a 
stick. Your wish is to make something useful. 
But you can't help making it more than useful. 
You can't help it, because, if you are not in a 
hurry, and nobody else is bossing the job, you 
find other impulses besides the utilitarian one com- 

[105] 



Were You Ever a Child? 

ing in to elaborate your task. Shall I name those 
impulses ? 

The Questioner. If you will. 

The Artist. I am not a psychologist, but I 
would call them the impulse to command and the 
impulse to obey. 

The Questioner. To command and obey 
what? 

The Artist. Your material, whatever it is — 
paint and canvas, words, sounds, clay, marble, iron. 
In this case, the stick of wood. 

The Questioner. I'm afraid I do not 
quite — 

The Artist. The impulse to command comes 
first — the impulse to just show that stick who is 
master! the desire to impose your imperial will 
upon it. I suppose you might call it Vanity. 
And that impulse alone would result in your mak- 
ing something fantastic and grotesque or strikingly 
absurd — and yet beautiful in its way. But it 
is met and checked by the other impulse — the im- 
pulse to obey. No man that ever whittled wood 
but has felt that impulse. He feels that he must 
not do simply what he wants to do, but also what 
the wood wants done to it. The real artist does 
not care to treat marble as if it were soft, nor 
paint and canvas as though they were three-di- 

[106], 



The Child as Artist 

mensional. He could if he wanted to — but he 
respects his medium. There is an instinctive 
pleasure in letting it have its way. I suppose you 
might call it Reverence. And this Vanity and 
this Reverence, the desire to command and the 
desire to obey, when they are set free in the 
dream and effort of creation, produce something 
which is more than useful. That something more 
is what we call Beauty.^ — Do you care to have me 
go further into the mechanics of beauty? 

The Questioner. Well — er — I suppose 
now that we have got this far into the subject, we 
might as well get to the end of it. Go on ! 

The Artist. What I am about to tell you is 
the only really important thing about art. Un- 
fortunately, the facts at issue have never been 
studied by first-class scientific minds, and so they 
lack a proper terminology to make them clear. 
In default of such a scientific terminology, we are 
forced to use the word ^^ rhythm " in the special 
sense in which artists understand it. You speak 
of the movements of a dance as being rhythmic. 
The artist understands the word to refer to the 
relation of these movements to each other and 
above all to the emotion which they express. 
And to him the whole world is a dance, full of 
rhythmic gestures. The gesture of standing still, 

[107] 



Were You Ever a Child'? 

or of being asleep, is also rhythmic; the body is 
itself a gesture — he will speak of the rhythm 
of the line of a lifted arm or a bent knee. Trees 
that lift their branches to the sky, and rocks that 
sleep on the ground have their rhythms — every 
tree and every rock its own special rhythm. The 
rhythm of a pine tree is different from that of a 
palm — the rhythm of granitic rocks different 
from that of hmestone. So far the matter is 
simple enough. But the relations of these rhy- 
thms to each other are also rhythmic. These rela- 
tions are in fact so manifold that they constitute a 
chaos. But in this chaos each person feels a dif- 
ferent rhythm; and, according as he has the power, 
transmits his sense of it to us through a rhythmic 
treatment of his medium. In the presence of his 
work, we feel what he has felt about the world; 
but we feel something more than that — we feel 
also the rhythm of the struggle in the artist 
between his impulse to command and his impulse 
to obey. Our own impulses of vanity and of 
reverence go out to welcome his power and his 
faithfulness. And just as there are gay rhythms 
and sad rhythms in the gesture of movement, so 
there are magnificent rhythms and trivial rhythms 
in the gesture of a soul facing the chaos of the 
world. What has he found worth while to play 

[108] 



The Child as Artist 

with, and how has he played with it? What kind 
of creator is he? Ability to feel and express 
significant rhythm - — that is nine-tenths of art. 

The Questioner. But my dear fellow, how 
are we to teach all this to children? 

The Artist. Very simply: by giving them a 
knife and a piece of wood. 

The Questioner. Well, really! 

The Artist. And crayons and clay and sing- 
ing-games and so forth. — But perhaps you prefer 
to show them pictures of alleged masterpieces, 
and tell them, *' This is great art! " They will 
believe you, of course; and they will hate great 
art ever afterwards — just as they hate great 
poetry, and for the same excellent reason: be- 
cause, presented to them in that way, it is nothing 
but a damned nuisance. Yet the child who en- 
joys hearing and telling a story has in him the 
capacity to appreciate and perhaps to create the 
greatest of stories; and the child who enjoys whit- 
tling a block of wood has in him the capacity to 
appreciate and perhaps to create the greatest art! 

The Questioner. Then you do not think 
children can be taught to appreciate art by looking 
at photographic reproductions of it? 

The Artist. I would hardly expect a Fiji 
Islander to become an appreciator of civilized 

[109] 



Were You Ever a Child? 

music by letting him look at my phonograph rec- 
ords. The dingy-brownish photograph of a glori- 
ously colored painting has even less educational 
value — for it lies about the original. Do you 
know that there are thousands and thousands of 
American school children who think that the great 
master-pieces of the world's painting are the color 
of axle-grease? They are never told that their 
own free efforts with colored crayons are more like 
Botticelli in every sense than any photograph 
could possibly be; but it is true. 

The Questioner. But don't you want them 
to respect Botticelli? 

The Artist. No. I want them to look at 
Botticelli's pictures as they look at those of an- 
other child '. — free to criticize, free to dislike, free 
to scorn. For only when you are free to despise, 
are you free to admire. After all, who was 
Botticelli? Another child. Perhaps they may 
prefer Goya • — ■ 

The Questioner. Or the Sunday comic sup- 
plement ! 

The Artist. A healthy taste. And if they 
know what drawing is, though having used a pen- 
cil themselves, they will prefer the better comic 
pictures to the worse, and be ready to ap- 
preciate Goya and Daumier — who were the 

[no] . 



The Child as Artist 

super-Sunday-supplement comic artists of their 
day. 

The Questioner. Left to themselves they 
may come to like Goya, as you say; but will they 
ever come to appreciate such a masterpiece as 
Lionardo's Last Supper without some more for- 
mal teaching? 

The Artist. Do you call it '^ teaching " to 
talk solemnly to children in language they can- 
not understand? If they are making pictures 
themselves, and being assisted in their enthusias- 
tic experiments by a real artist instead of a 
teacher, they will naturally wonder why their 
friend should have the photograph of the Last 
Supper in the portfolio from which he is always 
taking out some picture in order to illustrate his 
answers to their questions. And having won- 
dered, they will ask why, and their friend will 
tell them; and perhaps they will get some of their 
friend's enthusiasm, and perhaps not. But they 
will know that the real human being who is like 
themselves does like that picture. 

The Questioner. But it makes no difference 
whether they like it or not? 

The Artist. You can't compel them to like 
it, can you? You can only compel them to pre- 
tend that they do. 

[Ill] 



Were You Ever a Child? 

The Questioner. Can't you teach them 
what is called *^ good taste ''? 

The Artist. Only too easily. And their 
*' good taste " will lead them infallibly to prefer 
the imitations of what they have been taught to 
praise, and quite as infallibly to reject the great 
new art of their generation. They will think 
some new Whistler a pot of paint flung in the pub- 
lic's face, and the next Cezanne a dauber. 

The Questioner. Then you don't approve 
of good taste ! 

The Artist. Every artist despises it, and 
the people who have it. We know quite well 
that the people who pretend to like Titian and 
Turner, because they have been carefully taught 
that it is the thing to do, would have turned up 
their noses at Titian and Turner in their own 
day — because they were not on the list of dead 
artists whom it was the fashion to call great; 
they know moreover that these same people of 
good taste are generally incapable of distinguish- 
ing between a beautiful and an ugly wall-paper, 
between a beautiful and an ugly plate, or even be- 
tween a beautiful and an ugly necktie ! Outside 
the bounds of their memorized list, they have no 
taste whatever. 

[112] 



The Child as Artist 

The Questioner. Cannot good taste be 
taught so as to include the whole of life? 

The Artist. It would take too much time. 
And thank God for that! For good taste is 
simply a polite pretense by which we cover up our 
lack of that real sense of beauty which comes 
only from intimate acquaintance with creative pro- 
cesses. The most cultivated people in the world 
cannot produce beauty by merely having notions 
about it. But the most uncultivated people in the 
world cannot help producing beauty if only they 
have time to dream as they work — if only they 
have freedom to let their work become something 
besides utilitarian. 

The Questioner. You think, then, that edu- 
cation should not concern itself with good taste, 
but rather with creative effort? 

The Artist. Exactly. 

The Questioner. You say that children are 
artists already? 

The Artist. And that artists are children. 

The Questioner. Then the task of educa- 
tion in respect to them would seem to be easy! 

The Artist. No — on the contrary, infinitely 
hard! 

The Questioner. What do you mean? 

[113] 



Were You Ever a Child ^ 

The Artist. I have said that children are 
artists and that artists are children. The task 
of education is to help them to grow up. 

The Questioner. New difficulties! 

The Artist. And tremendous ones! But if 
I am to discuss them, you must keep still for a 
while and let me talk in my own fashion. 

The Questioner. That is for the — er- — 
for those in charge of this meeting to determine. 

— Very well, ladies and gentlemen. Shall we 
give the Artist the platform for half an hour? 
What is the sentiment of the meeting? 

A Voice. That we adjourn for lunch! 



[114] 



XVIL The Artist as a Child 

WITHOUT any further delay, the Artist 
shall now address you.-r— Please take 
the platform, sir! 

** My friends ! We are gathered here today 
to consider how to implant in the youthful and 
innocent minds which are entrusted to our care 
the beneficent and holy influences of that trans- 
cendent miracle which we know as Art. Sacred 
and mysterious subject that it is, we approach it 
with bated — '' 

Wait! wait! There is some mistake here, I 
am sure. Just a moment ! — 

^* We approach with bated breath these austere 
and sacred — " 

Stop, I say! 

'^ Austere and sacred regions - — -'' 

Usher, will you please throw this fellow out! 
He is not the man we were listening to this morn- 
ing — he is a rank impostor, who has disguised 
himself as an artist in order to befuddle our 

[115] 



Were You Ever a Child? 
deliberations with mystagogical cant. If you 
will pull off that false beard, I think you will find 
that he is a well-known Chautauqua lecturer. . . . 
Aha, I thought so ! — Shame on you ! And now 
get out of here as quickly as you can ! — Ah, 
there comes the real Artist — late, as usual. 
What have you to say for yourself? 

'* I'm sorry — I got to thinking of something 
else, and nearly forgot to come back here. 
Which brings me at once to the heart of what I 
want to say. Artists, as I have said, are chil- 
dren — and, children that they are, they forget 
the errands upon which the world sends them. 
They forget, because these errands are not part 
of their own life. You reproach us with being 
careless and irresponsible — but if you will study 
the child at play or the artist at work, you will dis- 
cover that he is not careless or irresponsible in 
regard to his own concerns. But this deep di- 
vorce between the concerns of the artist and the 
child and the concerns of the world is the tragic 
problem for which we now seek a solution. The 
world has been unable to solve it. It has only 
made the breach deeper. 

'' For the world does not know that its work 
can be play, that adult life can be a game like 
the games of children, only with more desperate 

[ii6] 



The Artist as a Child 

and magnificent issues. It does not reflect that 
we gather sticks in the wood with infinite happy 
patience and labour to build our bonfires because 
those bonfires are our own dream creatively real- 
ized; and it cannot think of any better way to 
get us to bring in the wood for the kitchen stove 
than to say, * Johnny, I've told you three times 
to bring in that wood, and if you can't mind I'll 
have your father interview you in the woodshed.' 
In brief, it presents our participation in adult life 
as meaningless toil performed at the bidding of 
another under coercion. And the whole of adult 
life gradually takes on this same aspect. We are 
to do the bidding of another in office or factory 
because otherwise we will starve. 

^' So the child-artist unwillingly becomes a slave. 
But there are some children who rebel against 
slavery. They prefer to keep their dreams. 
They are regarded with disapproval and anxiety 
by their families, who tell them that they must 
grow up. But they do not want to grow up into 
slavery. They want to remain free. They want 
to -make their dreams come true. 

'''But who will pay for your dreams?' the 
world asks. And it is not pleasant to face the 
possibility of starving to death. And so they 
comfort themselves with the illusion of fame and 

[117] 



Were You Ever a Child ^ 

wealth. Sometimes their families are cajoled 
into investing in this rather doubtful speculative 
enterprise, and the child-artist becomes an artist- 
child, supported through life by his parents, and 
playing busily at his art. Sometimes the specu- 
lation turns out well financially, the illusion of 
success becomes a reality; but this, however 
gratifying to the artist as a justification of his 
career, is not his own reason for being an artist. 
The ' successful ' artist has a childlike pleasure in 
the awe of really grown-up people at the material 
proofs of his importance; and if he has given 
hostages to fortune, if he must support a family 
of his own, he may ploddingly reproduce the 
happy accidents of his creative effort which 
gained him these rewards; but he feels that in so 
doing he has ceased to be a free man and become 
a slave — and all too often, as we know from the 
shocked comment of the world, he renounces these 
rewards, becomes a child at play again, and lets 
his wife and children get along as best they may. 
He yearns, perhaps, for fame — as a sort of 
public consent to his going on being a child. But 
whether he starves in the garret or bows from his 
limousine to admiring crowds, what he really 
wants of the world is just permission to play. 
He is not interested in the affairs of the world. 

[ii8] 



The Artist as a Child 

** There are exceptions, of course. There are 
poets and musicians and painters who take an in- 
terest in the destinies of mankind; but this is re- 
garded by their fellow-artists as a kind of heresy 
or disloyalty- — much as school children (or col- 
lege boys) regard the behaviour of one who really 
takes his school work seriously. The public also 
is accustomed to regard the artist as a child; they 
laugh at his * ideas ' about practical affairs — 
though often enough they adopt his ideas in dead 
earnest later. Shelley, for instance, proposed to 
conduct campaigns of education by dropping leaf- 
lets from balloons. ' A quaint idea, characteristic 
of his visionary and impractical mind,' said his 
biographers; and then, having laughed at the idea, 
the world in its Great War proceeds to adopt that 
idea and carry it out on a tremendous scale. . . . 

*^ When the child refuses to be a slave, he is 
thenceforth excluded by common consent from the 
affairs of the grown-up world. And as the breach 
widens between the artist and the world, as the 
world becomes more and more committed to slav- 
ery, the artist is more consciously and wilfully a 
child. He is forbidden by the growing public 
opinion of his group to write or sing about human 
destinies. ' The artist must not be a propa- 
gandist,' it is declared indignantly. And finally 

[119] 



Were You Ever a Child? 

it comes to such a pass that it is not artistic good- 
form for the artist to tell stories which the public 
can understand — the painter is prohibited from 
making images which the common man is able 
to recognize - — the musician scorns to compose 
tunes which anybody could dance to or whistle! 
And all this is simply the child's defiance to the 
world — his games are his own, and the grown- 
ups can keep their hands off! If adult life 
is slavery (which it is), he will be damned be- 
fore he will have anything to do with it. 

'' And he is damned — damned to a childishness 
which contains only the stubborn wilfulness of the 
child's playing, but has forgotten its motive. 
That motive is different from his. He has 
changed from the child who played at being a 
man, to a man who plays at being a child. The 
child's dreams were large, and his are small. 
The child took all life for his province — was by 
turns a warrior, a blacksmith, a circus-rider, a 
husband, a store-keeper, a fireman, a savage, an 
undertaker. The child-artist wanted to play at 
everything. The artist-child has renounced these 
magnificent ambitions. The world may con- 
script him to fight in its wars, but he refuses to 
bother his head as to what they are about; if he 
finds that he has to walk up-town because there 

[120] 



The Artist as a Child 

Is a street-car strike, he is mildly annoyed, but (I 
am describing an extreme but not infrequent 
type) he declines to interest himself in the labour 
movement; he escapes from the responsibilities 
of a serious love-affair on the ground that ' an 
artist should never marry ' ; he pays his grocery 
bills, or leaves them unpaid, but the co-operative 
movement bores him; and so on! He is content 
to live in that little corner of life in which he can 
play undisturbed by worldly interests. This type, 
I have said, is not infrequent; its perfect 
exemplars, the artists who were so completely 
children that they did not even know of the exist- 
ence of the outside world, are revered as the 
saints of art, and often as its martyrs, which in 
truth they were; and they are admired by 
i:housands of young artists who only aspire to 
such perfection, while shamefacedly admitting 
that they themselves are tainted with ordinary 
human interests. 

'' This is what the world has done to us; it has 
made us choose between being children in a tiny 
sphere all our lives, or going into the larger world 
of reality as slaves. And I think we have made 
the right choice. For we have kept alive in our 
childish folly the flame of a sacred revolt against 
slavery. We have succeeded in making the world 

[121] 



Were You Ever a Child? 

envious of our freedom. We have shown it the 
only way to be happy. 

'' But the artist cannot get along without the 
world. His art springs from the commonest im- 
pulses of the human race, and those impulses are 
utilitarian at root; the savage who scratched the 
aurochs on the wall of his cave was hungry for 
meat and desirous of luck in the hunting tomor- 
row; the primitive Greeks who danced their sea- 
sonal dances from which sprang the glory of 
dramatic art, wanted the crops to grow; and that 
which we call great art everywhere is great only 
because it springs from a communal hunger and 
fulfils a communal wish. When art becomes di- 
vorced from the aspirations of the common man, 
all its technical perfection will not keep it alive; 
it revolts against its own technical perfection, 
and goes off into quaint and austere quests for new 
truths upon which to nourish itself; and only when 
it discovers the common man and fulfils his un- 
fulfilled desires, does it flourish again. Art must 
concern itself with the world, or perish. 

** Nor can the world get along without the 
artist. Slavery cannot keep it going — it needs 
the free impulses of the creative spirit. It needs 
the artist, not as a being to scorn and worship by 
turns, but as the worker-director of its activities. 

[122] 



I 



The Artist as a Child 

It needs the artist as blacksmith, husband, and 
store-keeper — as teacher, priest, and statesman. 
Only so can it endure and fulfil its destinies. 

'* But if the artist is to be all these things, if 
he is to enter into the activities of the real world 
instead of running away from them, he must grow 
up. And that is the task of education: to make a 
man of him without killing the artist. We must 
begin, then, before the artist in him is killed; we 
must begin with the child. So far as I can see, 
the school as it exists at present is utterly and 
hopelessly inadequate to the task. It requires a 
special mechanism, which happily exists in the out- 
side world, and need only be incorporated into the 
educational system, in order to provide a medium 
of transition between the dream-creations of child- 
hood and the realistic creativity of adult life. 
This mechanism Is the Theatre." 



[123] 



XVIII. The Drama of Edu- 
cation 



B 



^^y^UT why — in the name of all that is 
beautiful! — why the Theatre?'' 
Ah ! Who uttered that agonized cry 
of protest? 

He comes forward. 

'' It was I who spoke. Do not, I beg of you, as 
you love Beauty, have any truck with the Theatre. 
Leave it alone — avoid it — flee it as you would 
the pestilence! I know what I am talking 
about!" 

And who, pray, are you? 

'' I am an Actor! '' 

Well, well ! — this is rather curious. 

'' Not at all ! Who should know better than 
the Actor the dreadful truth about the Theatre — 
that it is the home of a base triviality, the citadel 
of insincerity, the last refuge of everything that is 
banal in thought and action ! " 

Really, the Theatre seems to have no friends 
[124] 



The Drama of Education 

nowadays except the professors who teach play- 
writing in the colleges! But I think we should 
hear what our friend the Artist has to say in its 
defence. 

The Artist. *' There is nothing wrong with 
the Theatre except what is wrong with the whole 
of modern life. Our newspapers are base and 
trivial, our politics are insincere, and the products 
of our slave-system of production have a banality 
which Broadway could scarcely surpass. In all 
these fields of effort, as in the Theatre, the crea- 
tive spirit has surrendered to the slave-system. 
But in the Theatre, and in no place else in the 
world, we find the modes of child-life, of primitive 
creative activity, surviving intact into adult life. 
What is costume but the ' dressing-up ' of child- 
hood, the program with its cast of characters 
but a way of saying ' Let's pretend! ' — what, in 
short, is the Playhouse but a house of Play? It 
is all there — the singing and dancing, the make- 
believe, the whole paraphernalia of child creativ- 
ity: it is true that the game is played by children 
who are not free to create their own dreams, who 
must play always at some one else's bidding, half 
children and half slaves ! But — and this is its 
importance to us — the Theatre is the place where 

[125] 



Were You Ever a Child? 

the interests of the child meet and merge into 
those of the adult. It is the natural transition be- 
tween dreams and realities. And it is thereby 
the bridge across the gulf that separates art from 
the world. 

^' Let me explain. When I use the phrase 
^ The Theatre,' I am not thinking of the dramatic 
arts in any restricted and special sense. For the 
Theatre, as the original source of all the arts, the 
spring from which half a hundred streams have 
poured, into the separate arts of music, dancing, 
singing, poetry, pageantry, and what not — the 
Theatre in its historic aspect as the spirit of com- 
munal festivity — is significant to us not as the 
vehicle of a so-called dramatic art, separate and 
distinct from the arts which go to make it up, 
but rather as the institution which preserves the 
memory of the common origin of all these arts and 
which still has the power to unite them in the 
service of a common purpose. In the Theatre, 
as in the child's playing, they are not things alien 
from each other and isolate from life, but parts 
of each other and of a greater thing — the ex- 
pressing of a common emotion. 

*' So when I speak of making the Theatre a 
part of the educational system in the interest of 
art and artists, I mean to suggest a union of all 

[126] 



The Drama of Education 

the arts in the expression of communal purposes 
and emotions through a psychological device of 
which the Theatre, even in its contemporary form, 
stands as a ready-to-hand example. 

** I cannot be sufficiently grateful to the Theatre 
for continuing to exist, in however trivial or base 
a form. Suppose it had perished for ever from 
the earth! Who would be so daring a theorist 
as to conceive the project of bringing together the 
story-teller, the poet, the musician, the singer, the 
dancer, the pantomimist, the painter, in the co- 
operative enterprise of creating ' one common 
wave of thought and joy lifting mankind again '? 
Who, if such a thing were proposed, would have 
any idea what was being talked about? As it is, 
however, I can point to any musical comedy on 
Broadway and say, ' What I mean is something 
like that, only quite different ! ' 

*' Different, because the communal emotions 
which these artists would have joined themselves 
together to express would hardly be, if they were 
left free to decide the question themselves, the 
mere emotions of mob-anxiety, mob-lasciviousness 
and mob-humour which are the three motifs of 
commercial drama. No, you have to pay people 
to get them to take part in that dull and tawdry 
game ! When they do things to suit themselves, 

[127] 



Were You Ever a Child? 

as they sometimes adventurously do even now, it 
is something that it is more fun to play at. As 
free men and women they cannot help being 
artists, they must needs choose that their play 
shall be a work of art whose rhythms fulfil some 
deep wish of the human soul. — '' 

Just a moment! Some one, I think, wants 
to ask a question. — Louder, please ! 

'* I said — this is all very well as a plea for a 
Free Theatre, but what has it to do with Educa- 
tion?'' 

The Artist. '' Evidently I have not made 
myself clear. The problem of Education with 
respect to Art is to keep alive the child's creative 
impulses, and use them in the real world of adult 
life. We don't want to kill the artist in him; 
nor do we want to keep him a child all his life 
in some tiny corner of the world, apart from its 
serious activities. We don't want the slave who 
has forgotten how to play, nor the dreamer who 
is afraid of realities. We want an education 
which will merge the child's play into the man's 
life, the artist's dreams into the citizen's labours. 
The Theatre — " 

*' Excuse me, but what I can't see is how a 
Children's Theatre is going to do all that! Even 
if you put a theatre in every school-building- — " 

[128] 



The Drama of Education 

The Artist. *' You quite mistake my mean- 
ing. I would rather confiscate the theatres and 
put a school into each of them; and so, for that 
matter, would I do with the factories! But, un- 
fortunately, I am not Minister of Public Educa- 
tion. In default of that, what I propose is small 
enough — but it is not so small as you suppose 
when you think that I want to set children to re- 
hearsing plays and making scenery for a school 
play. I propose rather that the spirit of the 
Theatre — ^ the spirit of creative play — should 
enter into every branch of the school work, until 
the school itself becomes a Theatre — a gor- 
geous, joyous, dramatic festival of learning-to- 
live. 

" Think how real History would become if it 
were dramatized by the children themselves! I 
do not mean its merely picturesque moments, but 
its real meanings, acted out — the whole drama 
of human progress — a group of cave-men talk- 
ing of the days before men knew how to make 
fire — Chaldean traders, Babylonian princes, 
Egyptian slaves, each with his story to tell — 
Greek citizens discussing politics just before the 
election — a wounded London artisan hiding 
from the King's soldiers in a garret, and telling 
his shelterer the true story of Wat Tyler's re- 

[129] 



Were You Ever a Child? 

bellion — a French peasant just before the Revo- 
lution, and his son who has been reading a strange 
book by that man Rousseau in which it is declared 
that there is no such thing as the Divine Right of 
Kings. . . . 

'* Mathematics as an organized creative effort 
centreing around real planning and building and 
measuring and calculating. ... 

^' Geography — a magnificent voyaging in play 
all round the world and in reality all round the 
town and surrounding countryside. ... A scien- 
tific investigation of the natural resources of the 
community, its manufactures, exports and im- 
ports, discussed round bonfires in the woods by 
the committee at the end of a long day's tramp, 
and the final drawing up of their report, to be 
illustrated on the screen by photographs taken by 
themselves. . . . The adventure of map-mak- 
ing. ... 

^* (You get the idea, don't you? You see why 
it is more real than ordinary education — because 
it is all play!) 

'' And all these delightful games brought to- 
gether in grand pageants — instead of examina- 
tions ! — every half year. . . . 

'' That is what I mean. 

** Making whatever teaching of art there may 

[130] 



The Drama of Education 

be, part and parcel with these activities — and 
using the school-theatre, if one exists, not to pro- 
duce Sheridan's * Rivals ' in, but as a convenience 
to the presentation of the drama of their own edu- 
cation; but in any case making all their world a 
stage, not forgetting that first and best stage of all, 
God's green outdoors ! 

'' No, I say, I do not want to put a theatre into 
every school — I want every school to be a 
Theatre in which a Guild of Young Artists will 
learn to do the work of the world without ceasing 
to be free and happy. 

'* I hope I have succeeded in making myself 
clear?" 



[131] 



XIX. The Drama of Life 

As to his immediate proposals, I think the 
Artist has made himself quite clear. But 
he opened up an interesting vista of pos- 
sibilities when he spoke of being Minister of 
Public Education. He said he couldn't do cer- 
tain things because he wasn't Minister of Public 
Education. What we would like very much to 
know is what he would do if he were ! -. — Do you 
mind telling us? 

The Artist. " In the first place I would set 
fire to — But you are sure I am not taking up 
your time unduly? " 

No, no! Go on! 

The Artist. '' I would set fire to the coat-tails 
of all the present boards of education who are 
now running our educational system In complete 
indifference to the interests of the child. I would 
institute democratic control: turn the school sys- 
tem over to the National Guild of Young Artists. 
My career as an educational autocrat would neces- 

[132] 



The Drama of Life 

sarily stop right there, so far as the internal revo- 
lutionizing of education is concerned — for what 
I have been telling you is simply what I think 
the children themselves would do with the schools 
if they were allowed to run them. 

*' But Education, as I understand it, does not 
stop short with the school — it extends through- 
out all life. It is what I would call the civiliz- 
ing process. And there is much to be done to 
many departments of life before they can become 
part of a real civilizing process. I will describe 
only one, but not the least fundamental of these 
changes — the democratizing of the Theatre. 
Or rather, as I should say, turning it into a school. 

** A school of what? you will ask. A school 
of life, of aspiration, of progress, of civilization. 
It can be all these things if it becomes the Peo- 
ple's Theatre. Therefore, as Minister of Pub- 
lic Education, I propose to confiscate the Theatres 
and turn them over to the People. 

'^ But again, when I speak of ' The Theatre,' 
I do not mean merely the buildings in which plays 
are given. I mean all those arts which are part 
of communal creativity. I propose to unite them 
all in communal festivals of human progress. I 
do not propose that we shall begin by holding 
classes in the Hippodrome — though that will 

[133] 



Were You Ever a Child? 

come. I propose to begin with solemn and mag- 
nificent national holiday pageants similar to those 
which were so frequently and gorgeously cele- 
brated during the days of the great French Revo- 
lution — '* 

At this moment a policeman approaches the 
stage. 

" I wish to warn the speaker that everything 
he says is being taken down in shorthand by one 
of our men, and if he wants to finish his speech 
the less he says about Revolution the better. 
That's all." 

The Artist. *' Thank you ! I should have 
said, during the days of a certain great politi- 
cal and social upheaval which laid the foundations 
of modern life in general, and of our gallant ally, 
the French Republic, in particular. The historic 
festivals of which I speak were in charge of the 
great artists and composers of the nation, and 
their art and music were used to express the com- 
mon emotion and purpose of the People. So it 
will be with ours. Our artists will unite to ex- 
press the new ideals of mankind, and together 
with each other and with the People, will lay the 
foundations of a new and democratic art. 

'' It is here that the theatres, which will al- 
ready be in charge of the guilds of artists, will 

[134] 



The Drama of Life 

come into play. For the new art must have a 
solid basis in popular emotions such as only the 
theatre can give. They will therefore present 
plays which criticize the old slave-system, satirize 
its manners, its traditional heroes, its ideals; 
plays which invest with tragic dignity the age- 
long struggle of the People against oppressive 
institutions and customs; plays which creatively 
foreshadow a new popular culture and morality; 
and plays which celebrate the final victory of the 
People in their revolutionary strug — " 

Another policeman: 

*' Are ye making an address on education, or 
trying to incite to riot? L'ave that word Revolu- 
tion alone. — This is the second time we're warn- 
ing ye." 

The Artist. '' Vm sorry. I had hoped to 
show the influence of the national aspirations of 
a great Celtic people upon their artistic life, and 
the final flowering of their dreams in a certain 
political and social upheaval — " 

The Policeman. '* Oh, ye mean the Irish 
Revolution? That's different! Ye're all right. 
Go on!" 

The Artist. " My time, however, is short. 
I shall leave to your imagination the means to 
be used in furthering these aims by the democra- 

[135] 



Were You Ever a Child? 

tization of technical artistic culture. I shall 
speak only of its spiritual aspects. The Theatre, 
as I have said, will take the lead in preparing for 
the new day by presenting plays which will teach 
the People courage and confidence in their destiny, 
teach them to scorn the ideals of the traditional 
past, deepen their sense of community with the 
People in all lands in their world-wide struggle 
for freedom, and make them face the future with 
a clear and unshakable resolution, an indomitable 
will to victory. 

" If I had time, I should like to tell you how 
this educational program is already being car- 
ried out, in spite of the greatest difficulties, by 
a certain Slavic nation — " 

Another interruption ! — by a red-faced, dic- 
tatorial, imperatorial personage who has been 
sitting there all this time, swelling with rage and 
awaiting his opportunity. He speaks: 

"Officer! I am a member of the Board of 
Education, and I demand that you arrest that 
man as a Bolshevik agitator! " 

(Tumultous scenes.) 



[136] 



XX. Curiosity 



LET us, my friends, pass over this unfor- 
tunate incident, and get on to the next 
thing as quickly as possible. The next 
thing on our program is Truth. The one who 
best understands Truth is undoubtedly the Phil- 
osopher. — Here he is, and we shall commence 
without delay. Will some one volunteer to con- 
duct the examination? Thank you, madam. 
Go right ahead. 

The Lady. We wish to ask you a few ques- 
tions. 

The Philosopher. Certainly, madam. What 
about? 

The Lady. About Truth. 

The Philosopher. Dear, dear! 

The Lady. Whom are you addressing? 

The Philosopher. I beg your pardon! — 
It was only an exclamation of surprise. It has 
been so long since anybody has talked to me about 
Truth. How quaint and refreshing! 

The Lady. Please do not be frivolous. 
[137] 



Were You Ever a Child? 

The Philosopher. I am sorry — but really, 
it is amusing. Tell me, to which school do you 
belong? 

The Lady. To the Julia Richmond High 
School, if you must know — though I don't see 
what that has to do with Truth. 

The Philosopher. Oh ! You mean you are 
a school-teacher! 

The Lady. Certainly. Doesn't that suit 
you? 

The Philosopher. It delights me. I 
feared at first you might be a Hegelian, or even a 
Platonist. Now that I find you are a Pragma- 
tist like myself- — 

The Lady. Pragmatist? Yes, I have heard 
of Pragmatism. William James — summer 
course in Philosophy. But why do you think I 
am a Pragmatist? 

The Philosopher. A school-teacher must be 
a pragmatist, madam, or go mad. If you really 
believed the human brain to be an instrument 
capable of accurate thinking, your experiences 
with your pupils and your principal, not to speak 
of your boards of education, would furnish you 
a spectacle of human wickedness and folly too 
horrible to be endured. But you realize that the 
poor things were never intended to think. 

[138] 



Curiosity 

The Lady. That's true; they're doing the 
best they can, aren't they? They just can't be- 
lieve anything they don't want to believe! 

The Philosopher. That is to say, man is not 
primarily a thinking animal — he is a creature of 
emotion and action. 

The Lady. Especially action. They are al- 
ways in such a hurry to get something done that 
they really can't stop to think about it! But I'm 
afraid all this is really beside the point. What 
we want to know is why the school fails so miser- 
ably in its attempt to teach children to think? 

The Philosopher. Perhaps it is in too much 
of a hurry. But are you sure you really want 
children to learn to think? 

The Lady. Of course we do! 

The Philosopher. The greatest part of life, 
you know, can be lived without thought. We do 
not think about where we put our feet as we walk 
along an accustomed road. We leave that to 
habit. We do not think about how to eat, once 
we have learned to do it in a mannerly way. 
The accountant does not think about how to add 
a column of figures — he has his mind trained 
to the task. And there is little that cannot be 
done by the formation of proper habits, to the 
complete elimination of thought. The habits 

[139] 



Were You Ever a Child? 
will even take care of the regulation of the emo- 
tions. For all practical purposes, don't you 
agree with me that thinking might be dispensed 
with? 

The Lady. I hardly know whether to take 
you seriously or not — 

The Philosopher. Can you deny what I 
say? 

The Lady. But — but life isn't all habit. 
We must think — in order to make — decisions. 

The Philosopher. It is not customary. 
We let our wishes fight it out, and the strongest 
has Its way. But I once knew a man who did 
think in order to make his decisions. The re- 
sult was that he always made them too late. And 
what was worse, the habit grew upon him. He 
got to thinking about everything he wanted to do, 
with the result that he couldn't do anything. I 
told him that he'd have to stop thinking — that 
it wasn't healthy. Finally he went to a doctor, 
and sure enough the doctor told him that it was 
a well known disease — a neurosis. Its dis- 
tinguishing mark was that the patient always saw 
two courses open to him everywhere he turned — 
two alternatives, two different ways of doing 
something, two women between whom he must 
choose, two different theories of life, and so on 

[140] 



Curiosity 
to distraction. The reason for it, the doctor 
said, was that the patient's will, that is to say 
the functioning of his emotional wish-apparatus, 
had become deranged, and the burden of deci- 
sion was being put upon a part of the mind in- 
capable of bearing it — the logical faculty. He 
cured my friend's neurosis, and now he thinks 
no more about the practical affairs of life than 
you or I or anybody else. So you see thinking 
is abnormal — even dangerous. Why do you 
want to teach children to think? 

The Lady. Well — it is rather taken for 
granted that the object of education is learning 
to think. 

The Philosopher. But is that true? If it 
is, why do you teach your children the multipli- 
cation table, or the rule that the square of the 
hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum 
of the squares of the other two sides — unless 
in order to save them the trouble of thinking? 
By the way, what is the capital of Tennesee, and 
when did Columbus discover America? 

The Lady. Nashville, 1492. Why? 

The Philosopher. You didn't have to stop 
to think, did you? Your memory has been well 
trained. But if you will forgive the comparison, 
so has my dog's been well trained; when I say, 

[141] 



Were You Ever a Child ^ 

* Towser, show the lady your tricks,' he goes 
through an elaborate performance that would 
gladden your heart, for he is an apt pupil; but I 
don't for a moment imagine that I have taught 
him to think. 

The Lady. Then you don't want children 
taught the multiplication table ? 

The Philosopher. I? Most certainly I do. 
And so far as I am concerned, I would gladly see 
a great many other short cuts in mathematics 
taught, so as to save our weary human brains the 
trouble of thinking about such things. I am in 
fact one of the Honorary Vice-Presidents of the 
Society for the Elimination of Useless Thinking. 

The Lady. I am afraid you are indulging in 
a jest. 

The Philosopher. I am afraid I am. But 
if you knew Philosophers better you would realize 
that it is a habit of ours to jest about serious mat- 
ters. It is one of our short-cuts to wisdom. 
Read your Plato and William James again. De- 
lightful humorists, both of them, I assure you. 
I fear you went to them too soberly, and in too 
much of a hurry. 

The Lady. Doubtless your jokes have a his- 
toric sanctity, since you say so, but I do not feel 
that they have advanced our inquiry very much. 

[142] 



Curiosity 

The Philosopher. I abhor myself and re- 
pent in dust and ashes. What do you want to 
know? 

The Lady. I want to know what is the use 
of thinking? 

The Philosopher. Ah, my jest was not in 
vain, if it provoked you to that. I should call 
that question the evidence of a real thought. 

The Lady. Well, what is the answer? 

The Philosopher. Oh, please don't stop, 
now that you have made such a good start! 
Think again, and answer your own question. 

The Lady. Hm. . . . 

The Philosopher. Yes? 

The Lady. I was thinking of Newton and the 
apple. If it hadn't been for Newton's ability to 
think, he would never have formulated the law of 
gravitation. 

The Philosopher. And what a pity that 
would have been — wouldn't it? 

The Lady. You mean that it makes very 
little practical difference to us? 

The Philosopher. It would if the town were 
being bombarded. The Newtonian calculations 
are considered useful by the artillery schools. 
But it is true that it was Newton and not an ar* 
tillery officer who made them. 

[143] 



Were You Ever a Child? 

The Lady. You mean that the artillery cap- 
tain would have been too intent on practical mat- 
ters? 

The Philosopher. And In too much of a 
hurry. Then there's the steam-engine. Useful 
invention — the very soul of hurry. Who in- 
vented it — some anxious postilion who thought 
horses were too slow? Or somebody whose 
mind was so empty of practical concerns that it 
could be intrigued by a tea-kettle? And by the 
way, it was Stephenson, wasn't it, who applied the 
steam-principle to locomotion? IVe a very poor 
memory, but I think Watt's engine was just a toy. 
No practical use whatever. Other people found 
out the practical uses for it. Arkwright. Ful- 
ton. Hoe. Et cetera. 

The Lady. I see. The results of thinking 
may be put to use afterward, but the motive for 
thinking is not the desire to produce such results. 
I wonder if that is true? 

The Philosopher. What is the common re- 
proach against philosophers and scientists? 

The Lady. That they are impractical. But 
inventors — 

The Philosopher. Did you ever know an 
inventor? 

The Lady. Yes. . . . 
[144] 



Curiosity 

The Philosopher. Was he rich? 

The Lady. He starved to death. 

The Philosopher. Why? 

The Lady. Because every one said that his in- 
vention was very wonderful, but not of the 
slightest use to anybody. . . . Yes, it's true. 

The Philosopher. That the results of think- 
ing do not provide the motive for thinking? 

The Lady. Yes. 

The Philosopher. Then what is the motive 
for thinking? 

The Lady. Just — curiosity, I suppose ! 

The Philosopher. Disinterested curiosity? 

The Lady. Yes. 

The Philosopher. Then in the interests of 
scientific truth we should cultivate disinterested 
curiosity? 

The Lady. Doubtless. 

The Philosopher. How would you go 
about doing so? 

The Lady. I don't know. 

The Philosopher. By hurriedly thrusting 
upon the minds of the children in your charge so 
great a multitude of interests as to leave them no 
time to wonder about anything? 

The Lady. That would hardly seem to be 
the way to do it. But — 

[145] 



Were You Ever a Child? 

The Philosopher. When Newton looked at 
his famous apple, was there anyone there who 
said, ** Now, Newton, look at this apple. Look 
at this apple, I say ! Consider the apple. First, 
it is round. Second, it is red. Third, it is sweet. 
This is the Truth about apples. Now let me see 
if you have grasped what I have told you. What 
are the three leading facts about apples? What! 
Don't you remember? Shame on you! I fear 
I will have to report you to the mayor! " — did 
anything like that happen? 

The Lady. Newton was not a child. 

The Philosopher. You should have talked 
to Newton's family about him. That is just 
what they said he was ! I will admit that if you 
left children free to wonder about things instead 
of forcing the traditional aspects of those things 
upon their attention, they might not all become 
great scientists. But are you a great archaelo- 
gist? 

The Lady. No! 

The Philosopher. Did you ever go on a 
personally conducted tour of the ruins of Rome, 
and have the things you were to see and think 
pointed out to you by a guide? 

The Lady. Yes, and I hated it! 

The Philosopher. You are not a great arch- 

[146] 



Curiosity 

aeologist and you never expect to be one, and yet 
you thought you could get more out of those ruins 
yourself than with the assistance of that pesky 
guide. You preferred to be free — to see or 
not to see, to wonder and ponder and look again 
or pass by. And don't you think the children in 
your charge might enjoy their trip a little more 
if they didn't have to listen to the mechanically 
unctuous clatter of a guide? 

The Lady. If one could only be sure they 
wouldn't just waste their time ! 

The Philosopher. Madam, are you quite 
sure that you, as a teacher, are not wasting your 
time? 

The Lady. You make me wonder whether 
that may not be possible. But sheer idleness — 

The Philosopher. Was Newton busy when 
he lay down under that tree? Did he have an 
appointment with the apple? Did he say he 
would give it ten minutes, and come again next 
day if it seemed worth while? What is disin- 
terested curiosity, in plain English? 

The Lady. Idle curiosity — ■ I fear. 

The Philosopher. I fear you are right. 
Then you would say that the way to approach 
Truth, in school and out, is to cultivate idle curi- 
osity? 

[147] 



Were You Ever a Child? 

The Lady. I did not intend to say anything 
of the kind. But you compel me to say it. 

The Philosopher. I compel you? Deny 
it if you wish! 

The Lady. I thought you were going to an- 
swer my questions, and you have been making 
me answer yours ! 

The Philosopher. That is also an ancient 
habit of our profession. But since you have now 
arrived, of your own free will, at an inescapable 
if uncomfortable conclusion, you can now have 
no further need for my services, and I bid you all 
good day ! 



[148] 



XXL The Right to be 
Wrong 

ONE moment ! — I take it, my friends, 
we are agreed in demanding of the Phil- 
osopher that he condescend to some con- 
crete and practical suggestions in regard to edu- 
cation. — Briefly, please ! 

The Philosopher. *' You must draw your 
own conclusions. Traditional education is based 
on the assumption that knowledge is a mass of 
information which can be given to the child in 
little dabs at regular intervals. We know, how- 
ever, that the education based on this assumption 
is a failure. It kills rather than stimulates curi- 
osity; and without curiosity, information is use- 
less. We are thus forced to realize that knowl- 
edge does not reside outside the child, but in the 
contact of the child with the world through the 
medium of curiosity. And thus the whole em- 
phasis of education is changed. We no longer 
seek to educate the child — we only attempt to 
give him the opportunity to educate himself. He 

[149] 



Were You Ever a Child? 

alone has the formula of his own specific needs; 
none of us are wise enough to arrange for him the 
mysterious series of beautiful and poignant con- 
tacts with reality by which alone he can ' learn.' 
This means that he must chose his own lessons. 
And if you think that, left to chose, he would pre- 
fer no lessons at all, you are quite mistaken. 
Let me remind you that children are notoriously 
curious about everything — everything except, 
as you will very justly point out, the things peo- 
ple want them to know. It then remains for us 
to refrain from forcing any kind of knowledge 
upon them, and they will be curious about every- 
thing. You may imagine that they will prefer 
only the less complex kinds of knowledge; but 
do you regard children's games as simple? 
They are in fact exceedingly complex. And they 
are all the more interesting because they are com- 
plex. We ourselves with our adult minds, pene- 
trate cheerfully into the complexities of baseball, 
or embroidery, or the stock-market, following the 
lead of some natural curiosity; and if our minds 
less often penetrate into the complexities of music, 
or science, it is because these things have associa- 
tions which bring them within the realm of the 
dutiful. Evolutionary biology is far more in- 
teresting than stamp-collecting; but it is, unfor- 

[150] 



The Right to Be Wrong 
tunately, made to seem not so delightfully useless, 
and hence it is shunned by adolescent boys and 
girls. But postage-stamp collecting can be made 
as much a bore as biology; it needs only to be 
put into the schools as a formal course. 

** Consider for a moment the boy stamp-col- 
lector. His interest in his collection is in the 
nature of a passion. Does it astonish you that 
passionateness should be the fruit of idle curios- 
ity? Then you need to face the facts of human 
psychology. The boy's passion for his collection 
of stamps is akin to the passion of the scientist 
and the poet. Do you desire of children that 
they should have a similar passion for arithmetic, 
for geography, for history? Tlien you must 
leave them free to find out the interestingness of 
these things. There is no way to passionate in- 
terest save through the gate of curiosity; and 
curiosity is born of idleness. But doubtless you 
have a quite wrong notion of what idleness means. 
Idleness is not doing nothing. Idleness is being 
free to do anything. To be forced to do nothing 
is not idleness, it is the worst kind of imprison- 
ment. Being made to stand in the corner with 
one's face to the wall is not idleness — it is pun- 
ishment. But getting up on Saturday morning 
with a wonderful day ahead in which one may do 

[iSi] 



Were You Ever a Child? 

what one likes — that is idleness. And it leads 
straight into tremendous expenditures of energy. 
There is a saying, ' The devil finds some mischief 
still for idle hands to do.' Yes, but why should 
the devil have no competition? And that, as I 
understand it, is the function of education — to 
provide for idle and happy children fascinating 
contacts with reality — through games, tools, 
books, scientific instruments, gardens, and older 
persons with passionate interests in science and 
art and handicraft. 

'' Such a place would in a few respects resemble 
the schools we know; but the spirit would be ut- 
terly different from the spirit of traditional edu- 
cation. The apparatus for arousing the child's 
curiosity would be infinitely greater than the 
meagre apphances of our public schools; but how- 
ever great, the child would be the centre of it all 
— not as the object of a process, but as the pos- 
sessor of the emotions by force of which all these 
outward things become Education. 

*^ But, you may ask, what has all this to do 
with truth? Simply this. We have been forcing 
children to memorize alleged facts. A fact so 
memorized cannot be distinguished from a false- 
hood similarly memorized. And so we may very 
well say that we have failed to bring truth into 

[152] 



The Right to Be Wrong 
education. For truth is reality brought into vital 
contact with the mind. It makes no difference 
whether we teach children that the earth is round 
or flat, if it means nothing to them either way. 
For truth does not reside in something outside 
the child's mind; reality becomes truth only when 
it is made a part of his living. 

'' But, you will protest — and you will protest 
the more loudly the more you know of children — 
that their processes of thought are illogical, fan- 
tastic and wayward. And you will ask, Do I 
mean that we must respect the child's error in 
order to cultivate in him a love of truth? Yes, 
I do mean just that! Do I mean that we must 
respect the child's belief that the earth is flat, you 
ask? More than that, we must respect a thou- 
sand obscure and pervasive childish notions, such 
as the notion that a hair from a horse's tail will 
turn into a pollywog if left in the rainbarrel, or 
the notion that the way to find a lost ball is to 
spit on the back of the hand, repeat an incantation 
couched in such words as ' Spit, Spit, tell me where 
the ball is ! ' and then strike it with the palm of 
the other hand. You can doubtless supply a thou- 
sand instances of the kind of childhood thinking 
to which I refer. But for simplicity's sake, let 
us use the childish notion that the earth is flat as 

[153] 



Were You Ever a Child? 

a convenient symbol for them all. And I say 
that if we do not respect the error, we shall not 
have any real success in convincing the child of 
the truth. We shall easily persuade him that the 
globe in the schoolroom is round — that the pic- 
ture of the earth in the geography-book is round 
— but not that the familiar earth upon which he 
walks is anything but flat! At best, we shall 
teach him a secondary, literary, schoolroom con- 
ception to put beside his workaday one. And, 
in the long run, we shall place a scientific concep- 
tion of things in general beside his primitive 
childish superstitions - — but we shall scarcely dis- 
place them; and when it comes to a show-down 
in his adult life, we shall find him acting in ac- 
cordance with childish superstitions rather than 
with scientific knowledge. Most of us, as adults, 
are full of such superstitions, and we act accord- 
ingly, and live feebly and fearfully; for we have 
never yielded to the childish magical conception 
of the world the respect that is due to it as a 
worthy opponent of scientific truth — we have as- 
sumed that we were persuaded of truth, while in 
reality truth has never yet met error in fair fight 
in our minds. 

'' If you wish to convince a friend of some- 

[154] 



The Right to Be Wrong 

thing, do you not first seek to find out what he 
really thinks about it, and make him weigh your 
truth and his error in the same balance? But 
in dealing with children, we fail to take account of 
their opinions at all. We say, ' You must be- 
lieve this because it is so.' If they do believe it, 
they have only added one more superstition to 
their collection. Truths are not true because 
somebody says so; nor even because everybody 
says so; they are true only because they fit in 
better with all the rest of life than what 
we call errors - — because they bear the test 
of living — because they work out. And this 
way of discovering truth is within the capacity 
of the youngest school-child. If you can get 
him to state candidly and without shame 
his doubtless erroneous ideas about the world, 
and give him leave to prove their correctness to 
you, you will have set in motion a process which 
is worthy to be called education; for it will con- 
stitute a genuine matching of theory with theory 
in his mind, a real training in inductive logic, and 
what conclusions he reaches will be truly his. 
When he sees in a familiar sunset, as he will see 
with a newly fascinated eye, the edge of the earth 
swinging up past the sun ^ — then astronomy will 

[155] 



Were You Ever a Child? 

be real to him, and full of meaning — and not a 
collection of dull facts that must be remembered 
against examination-day. 

^' This means that we must treat children as 
our equals. Education must embody a demo- 
cratic relationship between adults and children. 
Children must be granted freedom of opinion — 
and freedom of opinion means nothing except the 
freedom to believe a wrong opinion until you are 
persuaded of a right one. They, moreover, 
must be the judges of what constitutes persuasion. 
You have asked me for practical and concrete sug- 
gestions in regard to education. I will make this 
one before I go : when I find an astronomy class 
in the first grade engaged in earnest debate as to 
whether the earth is round or flat, I will know 
that our school system has begun to be concerned 
for the first time with the inculcation of a love of 
truth. For, like Milton, I can not praise a fugi- 
tive and cloistered virtue, unexercised and un- 
breathed, that never sallies out and sees her ad- 
versary, but slinks out of the race, where that im- 
mortal garland is to be run for, not without dust 
and heat. — I thank you for your attention! " 



[156] 



XXII. Enterprise 

AND so we come to Goodness — and at 
the same time to a change in our pro- 
gram. After calling on the Artist as an 
expert to testify in regard to Beauty, and the 
Philosopher to tell us about Truth, it would seem 
that we should hear about Goodness from a 
moralist. So, no doubt, you expected — and so 
I had originally intended. But it cannot have 
failed to secure your notice that our experts pur- 
sued a somewhat unconventional line of argument. 
The Artist told us that the way to teach children 
to love Beauty was to leave them free to hate it 
if they chose. The Philosopher said that the 
way to inculcate in children a love of Truth was 
to leave them free to hold wrong opinions. Now 
it is all very well to talk that way about Beauty 
and Truth. We might perhaps be persuaded 
to take such risks, so long as only Beauty and 
Truth were involved. But Goodness is a dif- 
ferent matter. It simply would not do for us 
to hear any one who proposed a similar course 

[157I 



Were You Ever a Child? 
in regard to conduct. Imagine any one suggesting 
that the way to teach children to be good Is to 
leave them free to be bad! But that Is just 
what I am afraid would happen If we called an 
expert on Morals to the stand. I have observed 
twenty or thirty of them shuffling their notes and 
their feet and waiting to be called on. But I 
do not trust them. No ! Goodness It not going 
to be treated in so Irreverent a fashion while I 
am running this discussion. I am going to see 
that this subject is treated with becoming rever- 
ence. And as the only way of making absolutely 
sure of this, I am going to address you myself. 

We want children to grow up to be good men 
and women ; and we want to know how the school 
can assist in this process. First, we must define 
goodness; and I shall suggest the rough outline 
of such a definition, which we must presently fill 
up In detail, by saying that goodness Is living a 
really civilized life. And as one's conduct Is not 
to be measured or judged except as It affects 
others, we may say that goodness Is a matter of 
civilized relationships between persons. And 
furthermore, as the two most Important things in 
life are Its preservation and perpetuation, the 
two fields of conduct In which It Is most necessary 
to be civilized are Work and Love. Let us first 

[158] 



Enterprise 

deal with Work and find out what constitutes 
civilized conduct in that field. 

We all exist, as we are accustomed to remind 
ourselves, in a world where one must work in 
order to live. That, in a broad sense, is true; 
but there are certain classes of persons exempt 
from any such actual compulsion; and with re- 
spect to almost any specific individual outside of 
those classes, it is generally possible for him to 
escape from that compulsion if he chooses. Take 
any one of us here; you, for instance. If you 
really and truly did not want to work, you could 
find a way to avoid it; you could get your wife or 
your mother to support you by taking in washing 
or doing stenography — or, if they refused, you 
could manage to become the victim of some ac- 
cident which would disable you from useful labor 
and enable you to spend your days peacefully in 
an institution. But you prefer to work; and the 
fact is that you like work. You are unhappy be- 
cause you don't get a chance to do the work you 
could do best, or because you have not yet found 
the work you can do well; but you have energies 
which demand expression in work. And if you 
turn to the classes which are exempt from any 
compulsion to work, you find the rich expending 
their energies either in the same channels as every- 

[159] 



Were You Ever a Child? 

body else, or organizing their play until its stand- 
ards of effort are as exacting as those of work; 
you find women who are supported by their hus- 
bands rebelling against the imprisonment of the 
idle home, and seeking in all directions for em- 
ployment of their energies; and as for the third 
class of those who do not have to work in order to 
live, we find that even idiots are happier when set 
at basket-weaving. 

If we attempt to moralize upon the basis of 
these facts, we arrive at a conclusion something 
like this: it is right to use one's energies in or- 
ganized effort — the more highly organized the 
better. And if we ask what is the impulse or trait 
or quality which makes people turn from an easy 
to a hard life, from loafing to sport, from sport to 
work, and which makes them contemptuous of 
each other and of themselves if they neglect an 
opportunity or evade a challenge to go into some- 
thing still harder and more exacting — if we ask 
what it is that despite all our pretensions of lazi- 
ness pushes us up more and more difficult paths 
of effort, we are obliged to call it Enterprise. 

And when we face the fact that Enterprise is 
a love of difficulties for their own sake, we realize 
that the normal human being has, within certain 
limits, a pleasure in pain : for it is painful to run 

[1 60] 



Enterprise 

a race, to learn a language, to write a sonnet, to 
put through a deal — and pleasurable precisely 
because it is, within these limits, painful. If it 
is too easy, there is no fun in it. The extremer 
sorts of enterprise we call courage and heroism. 
But though we admire the fireman who risks his 
life in a burning building, we would not admire 
the man who deliberately set fire to his own bed 
in order to suffer the pangs of torture by fire; 
nor, although we admire the airmen who come 
down frozen from high altitudes, would we ap- 
plaud a man who locked himself in a refrigerator 
over the week-end in order to suffer the torture 
of great cold. We would feel, in both these 
hypothetical cases, that there was no relevancy of 
their action to the world of reality. But upon this 
point our emotions are after all uncertain. We 
do not begrudge applause to the football-star who 
is carried from the field with a broken collar-bone, 
or to the movie-star who drives a motor-car off a 
cliff into the sea, though it is quite clear that these 
actions are relevant to and significant in the world 
of fantasy rather than the world of reality. 
What it comes down to is the intelligibility of the 
action. Does it relate to any world, of reality 
or of fantasy, which we can understand, which 
has any significance for us? 

[i6i] 



Were You Ever a Child? 

When we turn to the child, we find that nor- 
mally he has no lack of enterprise. But his enter- 
prise is relevant to a world of childish dreaming 
to which we have lost the key. His activities are 
largely meaningless to us -■ — that is why we are 
so annoyed by them. And, in the same way, our 
kinds of enterprise are largely meaningless to him. 
That is why he usually objects so strongly to les- 
sons and tasks. They interrupt and interfere with 
the conduct of his own affairs. He is as out- 
raged at having to stop his play to put a shovelful 
of coal on the furnace, as a sober business man 
would be at being compelled, by some strange and 
tyrannical infantile despotism, to stop dictating 
letters and join, at some stated hour, in a game of 
ring-around-the-rosy. Most of what we object to 
as misconduct in children in a natural rebellion 
against the intrusion of an unimaginative adult 
despotism into their lives. 

Nevertheless, it is our adult world that they 
are going to have to live in, and they must learn 
to live in it. And it is true, moreover, that much 
of their enterprise is capable of finding as satis- 
factory employment in what we term the world of 
reality as in their world of dreams. What we 
commonly do, however, is to convince them by 
punishment and scolding that our world of reality 

[162] 



Enterprise 
is unpleasant. What we ought to do is to make 
it more agreeable, more interesting, more fasci- 
nating, than their world of dreams. Our friend 
the Artist has already told us how this may be 
done, and our friend the Philosopher has given 
some oblique hints on the same subject. I merely 
note here that the school is the place in which 
the transition from the world of dreams to the 
world of realities may be best effected. 

But there are various kinds of enterprise in 
our adult world. It is undoubtedly enterprising 
to hold up a pay-train, a la Jesse James. But 
though when the act involves real daring, we can- 
not withhold an instinctive admiration, yet we 
know that it is wrong. Why wrong? Because 
such acts disorganize and discourage, and if un- 
checked would ruin, the whole elaborate system 
of enterprise by which such trains are despatched 
and such money earned. It is obvious that train- 
robbery and wage-labor cannot fairly compete 
with one another; that if train-robbery goes on 
long enough, nobody will do wage-labor, and there 
will eventually cease to be pay-trains to rob. The 
law does not take cognizance of these reasons, 
but punishes train-robbery as a crime against prop- 
erty. Yet if we look into the matter for a mo- 
ment, we realize that loyalty to any property 

[163] 



Were You Ever a Child? 

system ultimately rests upon the conviction that 
its destruction would result in the total frustration 
of the finer sorts of human enterprise; it is for 
this reason that conservative people always per- 
suade themselves that any change in the economic 
arrangements of society, from a new income-tax 
to communism, is a kind of train-robbery, bound 
to end in universal piracy and ruin. And this 
moral indignation, whether in any given instance 
appropriate or not — or whether, as in the case 
of many piratical kinds of business enterprise, 
left for long in abeyance — is the next step in our 
human morality. If we ask ourselves, why should 
not human enterprise turn into a welter of primi- 
tive piracy, with all the robbers robbing each 
other, we are compelled to answer that in the long 
run it would not be interesting. For, although 
destruction is temporarily more exciting, it is only 
construction that is permanently interesting. 
And if we ask why it is more interesting, we find 
that it is because it is harder. It is too easy to 
destroy. Destruction may be occasionally a good 
thing, as a tonic, something to give to individuals 
or populations a sense of power; but their most 
profound instinct is toward creation. 

But the child, by reason of the primitive stage 

[164] 



Enterprise 

of his development, tends to engage rather more 
enthusiastically in destruction as a mode of enter- 
prise than in creation. He tires of building, and 
it is a question whether or not the pleasure he 
takes in knocking over his houses of blocks does 
not exceed his pleasure in building them. He 
prefers playing at hunting and war to playing at 
keeping house. And his imagination responds 
more readily to the robber-exploits of Robin 
Hood than to the Stories of Great Inventors. 
This is a fact, but it need not discourage us. 
What is necessary is for him to learn the inter- 
estingness of creation. If what he builds is not 
a house of blocks on the nursery floor, but a wig- 
wam in the woods, his destructive energies are 
likely to be satisfied in cutting down the saplings 
with which to build it. This simply means that 
his destructive energies have become subordinated 
to his constructive ones, as they are in adult life. 
But they cannot become so subordinated until what 
he constructs is wholly the result of his own wishes, 
and until moreover it is more desirable as the 
starting-point of new creative activities than as 
something to destroy. Those conditions are ful- 
filled whenever a group of children play together 
and have free access to the materials with which 

[165] 



Were You Ever a Child? 
to construct. And that is what the school is for 
— to provide the materials, and the freedom, and 
be the home of a process by which children learn 
that it is more fun to create than to destroy. 



[1 66] 



XXI 1 1. Democracy 

BUT In our adult world, there is still another 
moral quality demanded of our human en- 
terprise. It is not merely better to create 
than to destroy, but it is better to create something 
which is useful, or desirable, to others. Our 
moral attitude is a little uncertain upon this point, 
for the artist knows that his coarsest and easiest 
kind of enterprise is likely to be valued by others, 
and his finer and more difficult enterprises neg- 
lected and scorned. And so he has the impulse 
to work only for himself; nevertheless, he real- 
izes that if he does work only for himself he is 
doing wrong. For he really feels a deep-lying 
moral obligation to work for others — a moral 
obligation which comes, of course, from his ego- 
istic need of the spiritual sustenance of praise. 
The fact is that others are necessary to him, and 
that his work must please others. So if he ig- 
nores the crowd, it is because he wishes to compel 
it to take something better than what it asked for, 

[167] 



Were You Ever a Child? 

And this democratic quality in enterprise becomes 
the third test of civilized life. Does a given ac- 
tion fit in everybody else's scheme as well as in 
your own: and, if it conflicts with the outside 
scheme, is it with a fundamentally altruistic inten- 
tion? There are prophets and false prophets, 
and of those who take the difficult course of dis- 
agreeing with their fellows, the best we can im- 
mediately demand of them is that they afflict us 
because they think it good for us and not because 
they do not care. Yet even so they differ from 
us at their peril. For we are to be the final judges 
of whether we are being imposed on or not. If 
we do not, after full consideration, feel that we 
can play our game if Napoleon or the Kaiser 
plays his, we put him out of business. 

Now the child has a certain natural tendency 
toward the Napoleon-Kaiser attitude. He be- 
gan, as we pointed out some time ago, by being 
an infantile emperor. He likes it. And being 
deposed by his parents does not alter his royalist 
convictions. For he has not merely been de- 
posed — he has seen another king set up in his 
place. And one reason why parents are not the 
best persons to teach children democracy, is that 
they are the authors of the whole succession of en- 
thronements and deposings which constitute the 

[i68] 



Democracy 

early history of a family. No, the children need 
a change of air — a chance to forget their Wars 
of the Roses and to take their places in a genuine 
democracy. The place for them to learn democ- 
racy (though I believe this has been said before) 
is the school. For in a properly conducted school 
there is an end of jealous little princes and prin- 
cesses squabbling over prestige and appealing to 
the Power Behind the Throne; in such a school, 
conduct in general and work in particular is per- 
formed not with reference to such prestige as a 
reward, but with reference to their individual 
wishes in democratic composition with the wishes 
of their fellows. 

But this will be true only If they find at school 
something different from what they have left at 
home. And what they have left at home may be 
described as a couple of well-meaning, bewildered 
and helpless people who are half the slaves of the 
children and half tyrants over them. It is unfor- 
tunate, but it is true, that the first that children 
learn of human relationships, is by personal ex- 
perience of a relationship which is on both sides 
tyrannical and slavish. They naturally expect all 
their relationships with the adult world, if not 
with each other, to be conducted on this same pat- 
tern. They expect to find father and mother 

[169] 



Were You Ever a Child? 
over again in the school-teacher. They hope to 
find the slave and fear to find the tyrant. But 
it is necessary that they should face the adult 
world into which they must grow up, as equals; 
and therefore they must begin to learn the lesson 
of equality. The school, by providing a kind of 
association between adults and children which is 
free from the emotional complexes of the home, 
can teach that lesson. 

There is, however, so much intellectual confu- 
sion about what equality means that we must be 
quite clear on that point before we go on. At 
any moment of our careers, we are the servant of 
others, in the sense of being their follower, helper, 
disciple or right-hand man; and the master of 
still others, in that we are their leader, counsellor 
or teacher. We can hardly conduct an ordinary 
conversation without assuming, and usually shift- 
ing several times, these roles. And these relation- 
ships extend far beyond the bounds of acquaint- 
anceship, for one can scarcely read a book or 
write an article without creating such relationships 
for the moment with unknown individuals. In 
all the critical and important moments of one's 
life one is inevitably a leader or a follower. But 
in adult civilized life, these relationships are 
fluid; they change and exchange with each other. 

[170] 



Democracy 

And they are fluid because they are free. You 
and I can choose, though perhaps not consciously, 
our leaders and our helpers; we are not con- 
demned to stand in any fixed relationship to any 
other person. And this freedom to be servant 
of whom we please, and master of whom we can, 
Is equality. If I want to know about fishing- 
tackle, I will sit at your feet and learn, and if 
you will condescend to lead the expedition in 
quest of these articles I will be your obedient 
follower; while if you happened to want advice 
about pens, pencils, ink, or typewriter-ribbons, 
you would, I trust, yield a similar deference to me. 
We have no shame in serving nor any egregious 
pride in directing each other, because we are 
equals. We are equals because we are free to 
become each other's master and each other's ser- 
vant whenever we so desire. 

But the relationship of parents and children 
is not free. Parents cannot chose their children, 
and must serve their helplessness willy-nilly. 
Children cannot chose their parents, and must 
obey them anyhow. It is a rare triumph of 
parenthood - — and doubtless also of childhood — 
when children and parents become friends, and 
serve and obey each other not because they must 
but because they really like to. But schools can 

[171] 



Were You Ever a Child? 

easily take up the task which parents are only 
with the greatest difficulty able to accomplish, and 
dissolve the infantile tyrant-and-slave relationship 
to the grown-up world. The grown-up people in 
the school can be the child's equals. They can 
become so by ceasing to encourage the notion 
which the child carries with him from the home, 
that adults are beings of a different caste. Once 
they regard an adult as a person like themselves 
— which. Heaven knows, he is ! — children will 
discover quickly enough his admirable qualities, 
and his special abilities, and pay them the tribute 
of admiration and emulation. There is no human 
reason why a child should not admire and emu- 
late his teacher's ability to do sums, rather than 
the village bum's ability to whittle sticks and 
smoke cigarettes; the reason why the child doesn't 
is plain enough — the bum has put himself on an 
equality with them and the teacher has not. 



[172] 



XXIV. Responsibility 

BUT there is yet another quality which civil- 
ized standards demand of our human 
enterprise. People hate a quitter — and 
particularly the quitter whose defection leaves 
other people under the obligation to finish what 
he has started. We demand of a person that he 
should refrain from starting what he can't finish. 
This is a demand not only for democratic inten- 
tions, but for common sense and ordinary fore- 
sight. He shouldn't undertake a job that involves 
other people's putting their trust in him, unless 
he can really carry it through. And if he finds 
in the middle of it that he has, as the saying 
goes, '' bit off more than he can chaw," he ought 
to try to stick it out at whatever cost to himself. 
If other people have believed he could do it, he 
must not betray their faith. This feeling is at the 
heart of what we ordinarily call telling the truth, 
as well as the foundation of the custom of pay- 
ing one's debts. We don't really care how much 

[173] 



Were You Ever a Child? 

a man perjures his own immortal soul by lying, 
but we do object to his fooling other people by 
it. We are all so entangled with each other, so 
dependent upon each other, that none of us can 
plan and create with any courage or confidence 
unless we can depend on others to do what they 
say they will do. But our feeling goes deeper 
than the spoken word — we want people to be- 
have in accordance with the promise of their ac- 
tions. We despise the person who seems, and 
who lets us believe that he is, wiser or more 
capable than he turns out to be. We even resent 
a story that promises at the beginning to be more 
interesting than it is when it gets going. And in 
regard to work, the thing which we value above 
any incidental brilliancy in its performance, is the 
certainty that it will be finished. Hence the pride 
in finishing any task, however disagreeable, once 
started. 

This is the hardest thing that children have to 
learn — • not to drop their work when they get 
tired of it. But it should be obvious that there 
is only one way for children to learn this, and 
that it is not by anything which may be said or 
done in punishment or rebuke from the authority 
which imposes the task. It is not to be learned 
at all so long as the task is imposed by any one 

[174] 



Responsibility 
outside the child himself. The child who is sent 
on an errand may forget, and not be ashamed. 
But the child who has volunteered to go on an er- 
rand — not as a pretty trick to please the Authori- 
ties, but because of a sense of the importance of 
the errand and of his own importance in doing it 
— that child has assumed a trust, which he will 
not be likely to violate. 

But suppose, nevertheless, that he does forget. 
Here we come to the ethics of punishment — a 
savage ritual which we generally quite fail to 
understand. Let us take a specific case. A 
group of boys are building a house in the woods, 
and they run out of nails. Penrod says he will 
go home and get some from the tool-chest in the 
barn. He goes; and on the way, he meets a boy 
who offers to take him to the movies, where 
Charlie Chaplin is on exhibition. Penrod reflects 
upon his duty; but he says to himself that he will 
go in and see one reel of Charlie Chaplin, and 
then hurry away. But the inimitable Charles lulls 
him into forgetfulness of realities, and when he 
emerges from the theatre It is nigh on dinner time. 
Penrod realizes his predicament, and rehearses 
two or three fancy stories to account for his failure 
to return with the nails; but he realizes that none 
of them will hold. He wishes that a wagon would 

[175] 



Were You Ever a Child? 

run over him and break his leg, so that he would 
have a valid excuse. But no such lucky accident 
occurs. How is he going to face the gang next 
day? He has set himself apart from them, 
exiled himself, by his act. The question is, how 
is he going to get back? Now in the psychology 
of children and savages, there is happily a means 
for such reinstatement. This means is the dis- 
charge of the emotions — in the offender and in 
the group against which he has offended — of 
shame on the one hand and anger on the other, 
which together constitute the barrier against his 
return. That is, if they can express their anger 
by, let us say, beating him up, that anger no longer 
exists, they are no longer offended. While if he 
can by suffering such punishment pay the debt of 
his offence, he thereby wipes it out of existence, 
and at the same time cleanses himself from the 
shame of committing it. As the best conclusion 
of an unpleasant incident, he is ready to offer him- 
self for such punishment. For children under- 
stand the barbaric ritual of punishment when it 
really has the barbaric ritual significance. 

But the punishment must be inflicted by the 
victim's peers. There are few adults who can 
with any dignity inflict punishment upon children 
— for the dignity with which punishment is given 

[176] 



Responsibility 

depends upon the equality of the punisher and the 
punished, and on the implicit understanding that 
if the case had happened to be different the roles 
would have been reversed. 

It will be perceived that this leaves discipline 
entirely a matter for children to attend to among 
themselves, with no interference by adults, and no 
imposition of codes of justice beyond their years 
and understanding. Punishment, in this sense, 
cannot be meted out unless the aggrieved parties 
are angry and the aggressor ashamed; but let no 
adult imagine that he can tell whether an offending 
child is ashamed or not. Shame is a destructive 
emotion which a healthy child tries to repress. 
He does not say, '' I am sorry." He brazens 
out his crime until he provokes the injured parties 
to an anger which explodes into swift punishment, 
after which he is one of them again and all is 
well. 

But the abdication of adults from the office of 
judge-jury-and-executioner of naughty children, 
destroys the last vestiges of the caste system which 
separates children from adults. It puts an end 
to superimposed authority, and to goodness as a 
conforming to the mysterious commands of such 
authority. It places the child in exactly such a 
relationship to a group of equals as he will bear 

[177] 



Were You Ever a Child'? 

in adult life, and it builds in him the sense of 
responsibility for his actions which is the final 
demand that civilization makes upon the indivi- 
dual. And the importance of the school as a 
milieu for such a process is in its opportunity to 
undo at once, early in life, the psychological mis- 
chief brought about, almost inevitably, by the in- 
fluences of the home. 

There ! — I have let the cat out of the bag. I 
had intended to be very discreet, and say nothing 
that could possibly offend anybody. But I have 
said what will offend everybody — except parents. 
They, goodness knows, are fully aware that a 
home is no place to bring children up. They see 
what it does to the children plainly enough. 
But we, the children, are so full of repressed re- 
sentments against the tyrannies inflicted upon us 
by our parents, and so full of repressed shame 
at the slavery to which we subjected them, that 
we cannot bear to hear a word said against them. 
The sentimentality with which we regard the home 
is an exact measure of the secret grudge we 
actually bear against it. Woe to the person who 
is so rash as to say what we really feel! — But 
the mischief is done, and I may as well go on and 
say in plain terms that the function of the school 

[178] 



i 



Responsibility 

Is to liberate the children from the influences of 
parental love. 

For parental love — as any parent will tell you 

— is a bond which constrains too tyrannically 
on both sides to permit of real friendship, which 
is a relationship between equals. The child goes 
to school in order to cease to be a son or daughter 

— and incidentally in order to permit the two 
harassed adults at home to cease in some measure 
to be father and mother. The child must become 
a free human being; and he can do so only if he 
finds in school, not a new flock of parents, but 
adults who can help him to learn the lesson of free- 
dom and friendship. But that is something which 
I can discuss better in dealing with the subject of 
Love. 



[179] 



XXV. Love 

REMEMBER that it is not my fault that 
we find ourselves discussing so inflam- 
mable a topic ! But if you insist on know- 
ing what education can do to bring our conduct 
in the realm of love up to the standard of civil- 
ization, I can but answer your question. We 
have found that in the realm of work, civilization 
demands of us Enterprise, and Democracy, and 
Responsibility. And I think that all the demands 
of civilization upon our conduct in the realm of 
love might be summed up in the same terms. We 
despise those persons who are afraid of adventure 
in love; who in devotion to some mawkish dream- 
ideal, turn away from the more difficult and 
poignant realities of courtship and marriage; and 
we are beginning to despise those whose enter- 
prise is too cheaply satisfied in prostitution or in 
the undemocratic masculine exploitation of women 
of inferior economic status; and not only the 
crasser offences against sexual morality, but a 

[1 80] 



Love 

thousand less definable but not less real offences 
within the realm of legal marriage, may be de- 
scribed as attempts to evade responsibility. I 
leave you to work out the implications of this 
system of morals for yourself. What I particu- 
larly want to speak of here is the effect of parental 
influences upon children with respect to their later 
love-life, and the function of education in dissolv- 
ing those influences. 

It is no secret that adults generally have not yet 
learned how to be happy in love. And the rea- 
son for that, aside from the economic obstacles to 
happiness which do not come within the scope of 
our inquiry, is that they are still children. They 
are seeking to renew in an adult relationship the 
bond which existed between themselves and their 
parents in infancy. Or they are seeking to settle 
a long-forgotten childish grudge against their 
parents, by assuming the parental role in this new 
relationship. And in both efforts, they find them- 
selves encouraged by each other. Naturally 
enough! A woman likes to discover, and enjoys 
** mothering,'' the child in her husband; she likes 
to find also in him the god and hero which her 
father was to her In her infancy. And a happy 
marriage is one in which a man is at any moment 
unashamedly her child or (let us not shrink from 

[i8i] 



Were You Ever a Child? 

using these infantile and romantic terms!) her 
god. But it is a bore to have to mother a man 
all the time; it is in fact slavery. And it is equally 
a bore to have to look up to a man all the time 
and think him wise and obey him; for that also 
is slavery. The happy marriage has something 
else — the capacity for swift and unconscious 
change and interchange of these roles. The 
happy lovers can vary the tenor of their relation- 
ship because they are free to be more than one 
thing to each other. And they have that free- 
dom because they are equals. That equality is 
comradeship, is friendship. 

Do not imagine that friendship in love implies 
any absence of that profound worship and self- 
surrender which is characteristic of the types of 
love that are modelled upon the infantile and 
parental patterns. This is as ridiculous as it 
would be to suppose that equality in other fields 
of life means that no one shall ever lead and no 
one ever follow. Equality in love means only the 
freedom to experience all, instead of compulsion 
to experience only a part, of the emotional possi- 
bilities of love in a single relationship. 

I would gladly explicate this aspect of my theme 
in some detail, were it not that it might incident- 
ally comprise a catalogue of domestic difficulties 

[182] 



Love 

and misunderstandings at once too tragic and too 
ridiculous — and some of you might object to my 
unfolding what you would consider to be your own 
unique and private woes in public. 

I will, therefore, only point out that even what 
we term the civihzed part of mankind is far from 
measuring up to this demand of civilization in 
the world of love, the demand for equality. It 
may seem somewhat of an impertinence to blame 
this fact upon the early influences of the home, 
when there are so many outstanding customs and 
laws and economic conditions which are founded 
on the theory of the inequality of men and women. 
But these customs and laws and conditions are in 
process of change — and the home influences of 
which I speak are not. Our problem is to con- 
sider if these influences may not be dissolved by 
the school. For, mark you, what happens when 
they are not! Wedded love, as based upon those 
undissolved influences, comes Into a kind of dis- 
grace; serious-minded men and women ask them- 
selves whether such a bondage is tolerable; a 
thousand dramas and novels expose the iniquities 
of the thing; and the more intellectually adven- 
turous in each generation begin to wonder if the 
attempt at faithful and permanent love ought not 
to be abandoned. 

[183] 



Were You Ever a Child? 

Let me relate only one widely typical — - and 
perhaps only too-familiar — instance. A boy 
grows up poisoned with mother-love — er, I 
mean, petted and praised and waited upon by his 
mother, until he finds the outside world, with its 
comparative indifference to his wonderfulness, a 
very cold place indeed. Nevertheless, he adjusts 
himself to it, becomes a man, and falls in love. 
With whom does he fall in love? Perhaps with 
a girl like his mother; or perhaps with one quite 
opposite to her in all respects, — for he may have 
conceived an unconscious resentment against his 
mother, for betraying him by her praise into ex- 
pecting too much of an unfeeling world. But 
in any case, he is going to experience again, in his 
relationship with his sweetheart, the ancient de- 
lights of being mothered. He is going to respond 
to that pleasure so unmistakably as to encourage 
the girl in further demonstrations of motherli- 
ness. He is in fact going to reward her more for 
motherliness than for any other trait in her pos- 
session. And the girl, who wants a lover and a 
husband and a man, is going to find herself with 
a child on her hands. But that is not the worst. 
If the girl does not rebel against the situation, 
the man is likely to, when he finds out just what 
it is. For he, too, despite his unconscious infan- 

[184] 



Love 

tilism, wants a girl and a sweetheart and a wife. 
And when he realizes that he is being sealed up 
again in the over-close, over-sweet love-nest of his 
infancy, that he is becoming a baby, he revolts. 
He does not realize what has happened — he only 
knows that he no longer cherishes a romantic love 
for her. Naturally. Romantic love is a love 
between equals. She has become his mother — 
and he flees her, and perhaps goes through life 
seeking and escaping from his mother in half a 
hundred women. When this happens, we call him 
a Don Juan or a libertine or a scoundrel or a fool. 
But that does not alter his helplessness in the grip 
of infantile compulsions. 

I do not wish to exaggerate the ability of edu- 
cation to dissolve, without the aid of a special 
psychic technique, any deeply-rooted infantile dis- 
positions of this sort; but, aside from such flagrant 
cases, there are thousands of well-conducted men 
and women who just fail to free themselves suffi- 
ciently from the emotions of childhood to be 
happy in love. Besides their own selves, the sen- 
sible adult beings that they believe they are, there 
are within them pathetic and absurd children 
whose demands upon the relationship well-nigh 
tear it to pieces. It is in regard to these that it 
seems not improbable that a civilized education 

[185] 



Were You Ever a Child? 

could secure their happiness for them. And it 
would do so by supplanting the emotionally over- 
laden atmosphere of the home with the invigorat- 
ing air of equality. I refer in particular to 
equality between the sexes. So long as girls and 
boys are to any extent educated separately, en- 
couraged to play separately, and treated as differ- 
ent kinds of beings, the remoteness hinders the 
growth of real friendship between the sexes, and 
leaves the mind empty of any realistic concepts 
which would serve to resist the transfer to the 
other sex, at the romantic age, of repressed in- 
fantile feelings about the beloved parent. What 
we have to deal with in children might without 
much exaggeration be described as the disinclina- 
tion of one who has been a lover to become a 
friend. The emotions of the boy towards his 
mother are so rich and deep that he is inclined 
to scorn the tamer emotions of friendship with 
girl-children. (Notoriously, he falls in love first 
with older women in whom he finds some ideal- 
ized image of his mother.) He is contemptuous 
of little girls because they are not the mother- 
goddess of his infancy. What he must learn, 
and the sooner the better, is that girls are in- 
teresting human beings, that they are good com- 
rades and jolly playfellows. He must learn to 

[i86] 



Love 

like them for what they are. Ordinarily, the love- 
life of the adolescent boy is a series of more or 
less shocked discoveries that the women upon 
whom he has set his youthful fancy do not, in fact, 
correspond to his infantile dream. Half the dif- 
ficulties of marriage are involved in the painful 
adjustment of the man to the human realities of 
his beloved; the other half being, of course, the 
similarly painful adjustment of the girl to similar 
human realities. He could be quite happy with 
her, were the other dear charmer, his infantile 
ideal, away. And it is one of the functions of 
education to chase this ideal away, to dissolve the 
early emotional bond to the parent, by making 
the real world in general and the real other sex 
in particular so humanly interesting that it will be 
preferred to the infantile fantasy. 

I may be mistaken, but I think that half of 
this task will be easy enough. Girls, I am sure, 
are only in appearance and by way of saving their 
face, scornful of the activities of boys; they will 
be glad enough to join with them on terms of 
complete equality, and ready to admire and like 
them for what they humanly are. It will not be 
so easy to persuade boys to admire and like girls 
for what they are; and it will be the business of 
the school to dramatize unmistakably for these 

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Were You Ever a Child? 
young masculine eyes the human Interestingness 
of the other sex — to give the girls a chance to 
show their actual ability to compete on equal and 
non-romantic terms with boys in all their common 
undertakings. 

To make realities more interesting than dreams 
— that is the task of education. And of all the 
realities whose values we ignore, in childish pre- 
occupation with our feeble dreams, the human 
realities of companionship which each sex has to 
offer the other are among the richest. Despite 
all our romantic serenadings, men and women 
have only begun to discover each other. Just 
as, despite our solemn sermonizings on the bless- 
edness of work, we have only begun to discover 
what creative activity can really mean to us. 
Work and love ! — 

A Voice. ^' Won't you please come back to the 
subject of education? " 

What ! Is it possible -- — is it credible — Is it 
conceivable — • that you have been following this 
discussion thus far, and have not yet realized that 
education includes everything on earth, and in the 
heavens above and the waters beneath? Come 
back to the subject of education! Why, it is im- 
possible to wander away from the subject of edu- 
cation! I defy you to do so. All the books that 

[i88] 



Love 

have ever been written, all the pictures that have 
ever been painted, all the songs ever sung, all the 
machines ever invented, all the wars and all the 
governments, all the joyous and sorry loves of 
men and women, are but part of that vast process, 
the education of mankind. When you leave this 
discussion, you will not have dropped the subject; 
you will continue it in your next conversation, 
whether it be with your employer or your sweet- 
heart or your milkman. You cannot get away 
from it. And though you perish, and an earth- 
quake overwhelms your city in ruins, and the con- 
tinent on which you live sinks in the sea, some- 
thing that you have done or helped to do, some- 
thing which has been a part of your life, the 
twisted fragments of the office building where 
you went to work or the old meerschaum pipe you 
so patiently coloured, will be dug up and gazed 
upon by future generations, and what jou can 
teach them by these poor relics if by nothing else, 
will be a part of their education. . . . 



[189] 



XXVI. Education in 
1947 A. D. 

BY way of epilogue, let us be Utopian, after 
the fashion of Plato and H. G. Wells. 
Let me, as a returned traveller from the 
not-too-distant future, picture for you concretely 
the vaster implications of education in, say, the 
year 1947, as illustrated by the public school in 
the village of Pershing, N. Y. 

" But which is the school-building? '' I asked 
my guide. 

He laughed. ** I am surprised at you," he said. 
** Surprised that you should ask such a question! " 

'' Why? '' I demanded innocently. 

'' Because," he said, " in the files of our his- 
torical research department I once came across a 
faded copy of a quaint old war-time publication 
called the Liberator.^ It attracted my attention 
because it appeared to have been edited by a 

1 In which some of these chapters originally appeared, and 
to which my thanks are due for the privilege of republication. 

[190] 



Education in 1947 A. D. 

grizzled old fire-eater whom I recently met, Major 
General Eastman, the head of our War College. 
In those days, it seems, he thought he was a 
pacifist. Timers changes! '' 

" Ah, yes — General Eastman. I remember 
him well,*' I said. '' But what has that got to 
do with — " 

- '' In that curious little magazine was an article 
on education. It was signed by you. Don't you 
remember what you wrote? Didn't you believe 
what you said? Or didn't you fully realize that 
you were living in a time when prophecies come 
true? You ask me where the school-building is. 
Why, there isn't any school-building." 

We were standing in the midst of a little park, 
about the size of a large city block, bordered by 
a theatre, a restaurant, an office-building, several 
handsome factory buildings of the newer and more 
cheerful style, a library, a newspaper plant, and a 
church. 

My companion pointed to one of the build- 
ings. " That," he said, *' is the children's theatre. 
There they present their own plays and pageants. 
In connection with the work there they learn sing- 
ing and dancing, scene painting, and costume. Of 
course they also learn about plays — I suppose 
from your primitive point of view you would say 

[191] 



Were You Ever a Child? 

that we conduct a course in dramatic literature. 
But all those antique phrases of early educational 
practice have passed out of use. We would say 
that the children are learning to develop their 
creative impulses. We consider our theatre very 
important in that respect. It is the beginning of 
everything. 

** Next in importance, perhaps, are those factor- 
ies. They include a carpenter shop, a pottery, 
and a machine shop. Here is made everything 
which is used throughout the school. And there 
is the power house which furnishes the electric 
current for the whole establishment. You under- 
stand, of course, that the boys and girls get a 
complete theoretical as well as practical grasp of 
the facts they are dealing with — there is no 
neglect of what I suppose you would call book- 
learning, here. 

'^ Over there is the texile and garment factory, 
which designs and makes the costumes for the 
plays and pageants. You will not be surprised 
to learn that the garment-makers at any given 
period are the most active supporters of the 
propaganda for an outdoor theatre. It would 
give them a chance to do more costumes ! . . . 

*' Yes, we have politics here. The question of 
an outdoor theatre is being agitated very warmly 

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Education in 1947 A. D. 

just now. The pupils have complete control of 
the school budget of expenditure. There is only 
so much money to spend each year, you see, at 
present, though there is a movement on foot to 
make the institution self-supporting; but Tm afraid 
that will depend on the political situation. Ulti- 
mately, of course, we expect to put the whole of 
industry under the Department of Education. . . . 
But Fm afraid that's going too deeply into a 
situation you could hardly be expected to under- 
stand. 

'' At any rate to return to our school, the op- 
position to the outdoor theatre is from the scien- 
tific groups, who want an enlargement of their 
laboratories. . . . The architectural and building 
groups are neutral — they are working on plans 
for both projects, and all they want is that the 
question should be settled one way or the other 
at once, so they can go to work. There will be 
a meeting tonight, at which a preliminary vote will 
be taken. Yes, our politics are quite old-fash- 
ioned — Greek, in fact. 

*' The shops? They are managed by shop 
committees of the workers. Distribution of 
products to the various groups which use them 
is effected through a distributing bureau, which has 
charge of the book-keeping and so forth. There 

[193] 



Were You Ever a Child? 
has been a change in distribution recently, how- 
ever. At first the shops merely made what was 
ordered by the various groups, and requisitions 
were the medium of exchange. But the shops be- 
came experimental and enterprising, and produced 
what they liked on the chance of its being wanted. 
This made a show-place necessary, and as for 
various reasons ordinary money became the 
medium of exchange, the show-place became a 
kind of department store. Then some of the 
groups decided to use part of their subsidy in 
advertising in the school newspaper and maga- 
zines. They are working out some very interest- 
ing principles in their advertising, too, as you will 
find. They have to tell the truth. . . . 

*' There is the printing establishment. No, the 
paper and the magazines are not self-supporting 
• — though the school advertising helps. They're 
subsidized. We quite believe in that. 

*^ And there — you can get a glimpse of the 
greenhouses and gardens. Botany and so forth. 
. . . The library is the centre of the research 
groups. History, sociology, economics — finding 
out what and why. Very informal and very 
earnest, as you'll find. . . . The groups? Oh, 
the time one stays in each group varies with the 
individual. But every one likes to be able to 

[194] 



Education in 1947 A. D. 

boast quietly of an M. P. — that means a ' mas- 
ter-piece ' in the old mediaeval sense; a piece of 
work that shows youVe passed the apprentice 
stage — in a reasonable number of departments. 
Some Admirable Crichtons go in for an M. P. in 
everything! . . . 

" The restaurant — that's quite important. 
The cooking groups give a grand dinner every 
little while, and everybody goes and dines quite 
in state, with dancing afterward. We learn the 
best of bourgeois manners — makes it quite im- 
possible to distinguish an immigrant's child from 
the scions of our old families. The result is that 
the best families are discarding their manners in 
order to retain their distinction! Very amus- 
ing. . . . 

"The church? You mean that building over 
there, I suppose? That isn't a church — not in 
the sense you mean. It's our meeting place. 
You see, since your time churches have come to be 
used so much for meetings that when our archi- 
tecture group came to plan an assembly hall it was 
quite natural for them to choose the ecclesiastical 
style. Anyway, I understand it's a return to their 
original purpose. . . ." 

** But," I said, " this school is just like the 
world outside ! " 

[195] 



Were You Ever a Child? 

'^ Except/' he said, '' in one particular. In the 
world outside we still have certain vestiges 
of class privilege and exploitation — consider- 
ably toned down from their former asperi- 
ties, but still recognizable as relics of capi- 
talism. In the school we have play, pro- 
duction and exchange as they would exist in the 
outside world if these things were to be done and 
managed wholly with the intention of making bet- 
ter and wiser and happier citizens. The differ- 
ence, of course, is simply that one is run with an 
educational and the other with a productive in- 
tention." 

*' The difference seems to me," I remarked, 
*' that your school is really democratic and your 
adult world isn't quite." 

^' That is one way of putting it," he conceded. 

'' And I should think," I said warmly, '' that 
after going to these schools, your people would 
want the rest of the world run on exactly the same 
plan." 

'* It does rather have that effect," he admitted 
cautiously. *' In fact, the Educational party, as 
it is called, is very rapidly rising into power. 
Since you are unfamiliar with our politics, I should 
explain that the Educational party was formed, 

[196] 



Education in 1947 A. D. 
after the unfortunate events of 1925, by the amal- 
gamation of the United Engineers, the O. G. U., 
and the Farmers' League. Its chief figure is the 
sainted Madame Goldman, the organizer of the 
Women's Battalion in the First Colonial War. . . . 

** What surprises me," I interrupted, '' is that 
your conservatives — " 

** Tut I we have no conservatives — they call 
themselves Moderates." 

*' I am surprised, then, that your Moderates 
allow such schools to exist I Of course they will 
revolutionize any society in which they are ! " 

*' Well," said my companion, '* but what could 
they do ? Once you begin making schools for the 
children, you start out on the principle that educa- 
tion is learning how to live — and you end here." 

I pondered this. " Not necessarily," I said 
at last. '* You might have ended with schools 
in which the children of the poor were taught 
how to be efficient wage-slaves." 

*' Ah, yes," said my friend, " but they smashed 
that attempt away back in 1924." 

''Did they? I'm very glad to hear it!" I 
cried. ..." By the bye, how much do these 
schools cost — • all over the country? " 

*' Less per year than we spent per day on the 

[197] 



Were You Ever a Child? 

Second Colonial War. . . . But this is enough of 
description. You shall see for yourself. 
Come! " he said. 

We started toward the theatre. 

" Play," he was saying, ** is according to our 
ideas more fundamental and more important in 
life than work. Consequently the theatre — " 

But what he said about the theatre would take 
us far from anything which we are now accus- 
tomed to consider education. It involves no less 
a heresy than the calm assumption that the artist 
type is the highest human type, and that the chief 
service which education can perform for the fu- 
ture is the deliberate cultivation of the faculty of 
*^ creative dreaming." . . . 

I venture to quote only one sentence: 

'^ Mankind needs more poets J^ 



[198] 



APPENDIX 

A DEFINITION OF PROGRESSIVE 
EDUCATION 

(From a bulletin issued by the Association for the Advancement 

of Progressive Education, i8i8 N Street, Northwest, 

Washington, D. C.) 

" The aim of Progressive Education is the freest and 
fullest development of the individual, based upon the sci- 
entific study of his physical, mental, spiritual, and social 
characteristics and needs. 

** Progressive Education as thus defined implies the fol- 
lowing conditions: 

" I. Freedom to Develop Naturally 

" The conduct of the pupil should be self-governed ac- 
cording to the social needs of his community, rather than 
by arbitrary laws. . . . Full opportunity for initiative and 
self-expression should be provided, together with an en- 
vironment rich in interesting material that is available for 
the free use of every pupil. 

'' 2. Interest the Motive of All Work 

" Interest should be satisfied and developed through : 
(i) Direct and indirect contact with the world and its 

[199] 



Appendix 

activities, and use of the experience thus gained. (2) 
Application of knowledge gained, and correlation between 
different subjects. (3) The consciousness of achieve- 
ment. 

'* 3. The Teacher a Guide, Not a Task-Master 

". . . Progressive teachers will encourage the use of 
all the senses, training the pupils in both observation and 
judgment; and instead of hearing recitations only, will 
spend most of the time teaching how to use various sources 
of information, including life activities as well as books; 
how to reason about the information thus acquired; and 
how to express forcefully and logically the conclusions 
reached. Teachers will inspire a desire for knowledge, 
and will serve as guides in the investigations undertaken, 
rather than as task-masters. To be a proper inspiration 
to their pupils, teachers must have ample opportunity and 
encouragement for self-improvement and for the develop- 
ment of broad interests. 

"4. Scientific Study of Pupil Development 

*^ School records should . . . include both objective and 
subjective reports on those physical, mental, moral, and 
social characteristics which affect both school and adult 
life, and which can be influenced by the school and the 
home. Such records should be used as a guide for the 
treatment of each pupil, and should also serve to focus the 
attention of the teacher on the all-important work of 

[200] 



Appendix 

development, rather than on simply teaching subject 
matter. 

" 5. Greater Attention to All that Affects the 
Child's Physical Development 

** One of the first considerations of Progressive Educa- 
tion is the health of the pupils. Much more room in 
which to move about, better light and air, clean and well 
ventilated buildings, easier access to the out of doors and 
greater use of it, are all necessary. There should be fre- 
quent use of adequate playgrounds. . . . 

'' 6. Co-operation Between School and Home to 
Meet the Needs of Child-Life 

** The school should provide, with the home, as much as 
possible of all that the natural interests and activities of 
the child demand, especially during the elementary school 
years. It should give opportunity for manual experience 
for both boys and girls, for home-making, and for health- 
ful recreation of various kinds. . . . These conditions can 
come about only through intelligent co-operation between 
parents and teachers. It is the duty of the parents to 
know what the school is doing and why . . . 

" 7. The Progressive School a Leader in 
Educational Movements 

" The Progressive School should be ... a laboratory 
where new ideas if worthy meet encouragement; where 

[201] 



Appendix 

tradition alone does not rule, but the best of the past is 
leavened with the discoveries of today, and the result is 
freely added to the sum of educational knowledge. 

" ( The Association is not committed, and never can be, 
to any particular method or system of education. In re- 
gard to such matters it is simply a medium through which 
improvements and developments worked out by various 
agencies can be presented to the public.)'^ 



[202] 

3477 6 



